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"Eleventh Hour" depicts evil university/industry cabal in biotech

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

The CBS show "Eleventh Hour" on Dec. 18 depicted biotech work gone bad at the fictional University of California/Fillmore. The "buying" of academic research by industry also came in. Recombinant DNA work involving venom from scorpions was involved.br /Dr. Hood even made a comment about a near IR spectrum.br /br /Dialog suggested "green food coloring" was a petroleum product, triphenyl methane. In the real world commercial green food coloring is made by combining FDC Yellow 5 and and FDC Blue 1. a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartrazine"Yellow 5 is tartrazine/a, C16H9N4Na3O9S2, 1934-21-0, an azo dye, which does comprise two phenyl groups. a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Blue_FCF"Blue 1/a has formula C37H34N2Na2O9S3 (and is also termed Patent Blue AR) and does comprise a carbon bound to three phenyl groups, but comes from coal tar, not petroleum.br /br /The show also mentioned red coloring, a href="http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-carmine.htm"carmine/a, derived from cochineal insects.br /br /***br /Elsewhere NBC Nightly News featured Trenton's Terracycle.

Full post as published by IPBiz on December 18, 2008 (boomark / email).