Touching base.

The article presents news items related to various developments in the field of genetics. The U.S. National Science Foundation recently awarded S2 million to fund the Arabidopsis 2010 project, which aims to assemble the regulatory networks controlling development of Arabidopsis thaliana. This project brings together the strengths of four Arabidopsis research groups. Allerca, a California-based biotechnology company, has announced plans to market a breed of hypoallergenic cats, the first in a line of so called "transgenic lifestyle pets." They plan to use short interfering RNA technology to knock down expression of Fel d1, the most common protein allergen found in cat saliva and skin.