Topic 1 : Why science needs sustainable funding
Introduction
The 2024 theme for National Science Day, which India celebrates every year on February 28, is “Science for Sustainable Development”. Science and technological developments are key drivers of India’s journey towards becoming a developed country by 2047.
India on R & D
- Funding for fundamental research in India is amongst the world’s lowest, particularly for a country with high science and technology ambitions.
- In the recent past, India’s research and development (R&D) expenditure has dropped to the current 0.64% of GDP from 0.8% in 2008-2009 and 0.7% in 2017-2018.
- This reduced expenditure is worrying considering government agencies themselves have issued several calls to double this spending.
- The reasons for the reduction in R&D spending despite the government being cognisant of the need to increase it are not clear, but may stem from a lack of coordination between government agencies and a need for stronger political will to prioritise R&D expenses.
- Most developed countries spend between 2% and 4% of their respective GDPs on R&D.
- Many experts have called for India to spend at least 1%, but ideally 3%, of its GDP every year until 2047 on R&D for science to have a meaningful impact on development.
Improvement of spending
- Science requires consistent, large-scale investment to bear fruit.
- For India to reach the ‘developed nation’ status, it needs to spend more to scale R&D than developed countries spend to maintain that status.
- And beyond the current spending being inadequate, its primary dependence on public money signals an immature financing system and weak domestic market.
Share of R & D investment
- In 2020-2021, the private sector industry contributed 36.4% of the GERD whereas the Union government’s share was 43.7%.
- State governments (6.7%), higher education (8.8%), and the public sector industry (4.4%) were the other major contributors.
- In economically developed countries, a major share — 70% on average — of R&D investment comes from the private sector.
- The hesitancy of private-sector funding may be because of the poor capacity to evaluate R&D in India, ambiguous regulatory roadmaps that can deter investors, lack of clear exit options for investors in sectors such as biotechnology, and fears of intellectual property rights theft.
- While the Anusandhan National Research Foundation was meant to solve some of the financial issues, its implementation has been delayed.
- Thus, there is a perceived need to determine the overall quantum of R&D funding and its primary sources, given India’s ambition to be a developed country by 2047.
Utilisation of R & D budget
- In 2022-2023, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) used 72% of its estimated budget allocation on centrally sponsored schemes/projects while the Department of Science and Technology (DST) used only 61%.
- The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), which receives the lowest allocation for centrally sponsored schemes, spent 69% of its allocation.
- The phenomenon is also not specific to the Science Ministry; given that India generally under-spends on R&D, there will likely be a major impact if the allocated funds are spent optimally.
- The reasons for under-utilisation, as with under-allocation, are unclear and may indicate tedious bureaucratic processes for approving disbursements, lack of capacity to evaluate projects or clear utilisation certificates, lack of prioritisation for science funding by the Ministry of Finance or inadequate planning or implementation strategy for the requested funds by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Sustainable funding
- Against this backdrop, mitigating the under-spending and under-utilisation of funds earmarked for R&D stand out as obvious first steps.
- This in turn requires the political prioritisation of R&D spending and recognition of it as a core, irreplaceable element of India’s growth journey.
- This prioritisation has to happen not only within the concerned Ministries but also at the Ministry of Finance, which disburses the funds.
- Incentives for private investment, including relaxation of foreign direct investments, tax rebates, and clear regulatory roadmaps for products will help build investor confidence.
Way forward
- Finally, India also needs the bureaucratic capacity to evaluate science projects and, after allocations, monitor utilisation.
- Building such capacity is a prerequisite for India becoming a science power by 2047.
Topic 2 : Newfound ‘obelisks’ join viruses, viroids as third unusual life form
Context
Researchers analysed 5.4 million sequence datasets of RNA from bacteria in the human gut. In 220,000 of them, 29,959 distinct obelisks were identified.
Obelisks
- It is a newly discovered class of virus-like entities present in the human body.
- It comprises a class of diverse RNAs that have colonized and gone unnoticed in human and global microbiomes.
- Named after the highly symmetrical, rod-like structures formed by their twisted lengths of RNA, the Obelisks' genetic sequences are only around 1,000 characters (nucleotides) in size.
- These mysterious bits of genetic material have no detectable sequences or even structural similarities known to any other biological agents.
- They're also significantly larger than other genetic molecules that coexist inside cells, from plants to bacteria, called plasmids, which are more commonly composed of DNA.
- Obelisks represent their own class of organism. They lie somewhere between viruses and viroids.
-
Viruses (Virus particles or virions) are usually units consisting of nucleic acids and coat proteins called capsids. Viroids consist only of RNA, i.e. they contain no protein at all. Except for a few cases, viruses are not surrounded by a membrane.
|
- Different types of Obelisks appear to be present indifferent areas of our bodies.
- Obelisks were found to be present in gut and oral bacteria in all the seven continents
The simplest life
- Theodor Diener, a plant pathologist at the tried to isolate the pathogen that caused potato spindle tuber disease.
- Herealised the organism responsible — if he could call it that — didn’t contain the lipid layer or the protein coat found in viruses. It appeared to be just plain, naked RNA.
- This RNA would enter a cell as RNA, force the cell to make more copies of itself, and the new RNAs would then infect other cells.
- Diener called these life-forms ‘viroids’ since they resembled viruses.
- There was, however, one important distinction. Usually, genetic material contains a code that tells cells how to make various proteins.
- But the RNA of viroids didn’t code for any protein. For the most part, they were just small pieces of RNA that served no function apart from propagating themselves.
- Deiner also noticed that the viroid RNA was tiny (250-400 base pairs versus a few thousand in RNA viruses).
Next- generation sequencing
- The discovery was made possible using data obtained using a powerful technique called next-generation sequencing (NGS)
- Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is a massively parallel sequencing technology that offers ultra-high throughput, scalability, and speed.
- The technology is used to determine the order of nucleotides in entire genomes or targeted regions of DNA or RNA.
- NGS has revolutionized the biological sciences, allowing labs to perform a wide variety of applications and study biological systems at a level never before possible.
A link to S. sanguini
- Despite its ingenuity, the new study suffers from one minor limitation: since the team was analysing RNA data from all the gut or oral bacteria put together, it was impossible to determine which bacteria hosted a given obelisk.
- This way, they managed to link one particular obelisk to the bacterial species Streptococcus sanguini, commonly found in the human mouth.
Way forward
Further research will no doubt answer these questions. For now, all we know is that at the far reaches of life, the distinction between the living and the non-living is becoming increasingly murky.