Sydney-based company Proteome Systems' proteomics R&D system, ProteomIQ, has been launched on the market.

As the new year begins, market analysts are sounding the same warnings that they did in 2002 -- that Australian biotechnology companies must consider strategies like mergers and acquisitions and alliances to survive.

As Australia's biggest public research institution, CSIRO occupies a unique niche. Employing 6500 people, the organisation has a huge diversity of scientific skills to apply to Australia's industries.

The US National Institutes of Health has called for applications as it seeks to allocate US$7.4 million in 2005 to fund three new technology centres for networks and pathways.

Two big life sciences companies, IBM and Agilent Technologies, are stitching together major life sciences software packages.

Novartis Pharma and Beyond Genomics are collaborating to find molecular markers that can lead to treatment of cardiovascular disease.

Life science technology is about as cutting-edge as it gets, but now it's apparently also hip. At least that's the image projected by University of New Hampshire researcher Will Gilbert, who has taken to carrying around the human genome on his Apple iPod.

The task of creating specialised software tools to decipher the complexities of genes and proteins until recently has been a do-it-yourself project for the bio-research community.

Shortly before he died last year of squamous cell carcinoma, John Diamond, a columnist for The Times of London, published a poignant memoir entitled C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too ... , which includes the following vignette of a cancer cell: