eChapters

There are many types of intellectual property and its type varies from country to country. The most common types are patents, copyrights, trademarks, design and trade secrets. Intellectual property is an intangible creation of the human intellect and this intangible nature of intellectual property faces problems in comparison of traditional property like land or goods. Unlike traditional property, intellectual property is not dividable therefore a number of people can consume an intellectual good without its consumption. In addition, investments in intellectual goods suffer from appropriation problems, for instance Landowners can surround their land with a robust fence and hire armed guards to protect it, but creators of intellectual property cannot do that to stop their first buyer from replicating it and selling it at a lower price.

Biological Diversity Act, 2002 was passed by Indian government in pursuance of Convention on Biological Diversity, 1993 The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is a legally binding multilateral environmental agreement that has 194 contracting Parties (Countries) as its members with three objectives mentioned below:

1. Conservation of biological diversity
2. Sustainable use of the diversity and
3. Ensuring fair and equitable sharing of benefits of such use.

The recent concept of intellectual property emerged in England in the 17^th & 18^th centuries. The term Intellectual Property came in use in the 19^th century and in the late 20^th century. As of now the Intellectual Property has occupied common position in the global legal systems. There are different forms of Intellectual property rights which include patents, copyright, industrial design, trademarks, plant variety rights, trade dress, geographical indications and in some jurisdictions trade secrets too

The ITPGRFA is a comprehensive international agreement which is poised at guaranteeing food security through the conservation, exchange and sustainable use of the world's plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, instead of fair and equitable benefit sharing arising from its use. It also advocates Farmers' Rights.

13.1. Genesis of the Treaty

The conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture are keys to feed global growing population in the coming future. The Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was established in 1983, and the voluntary International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources was adopted here in. Another major step was taken in 1996 with the adoption of the Global Plan of Action at the Leipzig International Technical Conference on Plant Genetic Resources. 

15.1 Sample Objective Question

1. Which one is related to deposition of Micro-organism?
   1. Madrid Agreement
   2. Berne Convention
   3. Budapest Treaty
   4. Patent Cooperation Treaty.
2. WTO was officially commenced in the year...........
   1. 1970
   2. 2003
   3. 2005
   4. 1995
3. Which one is related to protection of Trademarks
   1. Madrid Agreement
   2. Berne Convention
   3. Budapest treaty
   4. None of these
4. One of the four patent office is...........
   1. Patna
   2. Banglore
   3. Varanasi
   4. Mumbai

The Patent Cooperation Treaty provides an overview of an International Treaty which is administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization. The Patent Cooperation Treaty is an international treaty with more than 157 Contracting States by 2022. India deposited its instrument of accession on 7 September 1998 to both international treaties of WIPO in Geneva i.e. Paris convention for the protection of Industrial Property and Patent Cooperation treaty. PCT provides a system for filing a patent application and allow us to obtain patents in multiple countries around the world on the basis of a single patent application.

This is an international convention governing the recognition of deposits in officially approved culture collections for the purpose of patent applications in any country that is a party to it. Because of the difficulties and on occasion of virtual impossibility of reproducing a microorganism from a description of it in a patent specification, it is essential to deposit a strain in a culture collection centre for testing and examination by others.

This was the year, 1974, the Director General of WIPO convened a committee of Experts to discuss the possibilities of international cooperation over the deposit of microorganisms for patent purposes

Precision agriculture uses spatially and temporally variable information to improve crop management, resource efficiency and agricultural productivity. This chapter examines the integration of artificial intelligence throughout the precision agriculture workflow. It introduces variable-rate technologies, georeferenced data collection and decision-support systems, followed by machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, reinforcement learning, fuzzy logic and expert systems. Applications include crop yield prediction, plant disease monitoring, soil property estimation, irrigation planning and autonomous agricultural operations. Remote sensing, satellite imagery, IoT sensor networks and edge computing are considered for real-time decision-making. The chapter also discusses agricultural robots and autonomous machinery, practical field applications, data limitations, hardware costs, connectivity and model interpretability.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming an important tool for addressing complex challenges in plant science and agriculture. This chapter introduces the fundamental concepts, methodologies and emerging paradigms of AI applied to plant research. It discusses machine learning, deep learning, convolutional and recurrent neural networks, and transformer architectures, with applications in plant phenotyping, disease diagnosis, genomics and precision agriculture. Different data modalities, including imaging, LiDAR, remote sensing, genomic sequences and metabolomics, are examined. The chapter also considers transfer learning, data augmentation, explainable AI, graph neural networks, federated learning and multimodal AI, together with challenges, ethical issues and future research directions

Among several respiratory diseases affecting man, bronchial asthma is the most common disabling syndrome, nearly 7 to 10 per cent of the world population suffer from bronchial asthma, which is a chronic illness involving the respiratory system in which the airway occasionally constricts, becomes inflamed, and is lined with excessive amounts of mucus, often in response to one or more triggers. These episodes may be triggered by such things as exposure to an environmental stimulant (or allergen), cold air, warm air, moist air, exercise or exertion, or emotional stress. In children, the most common triggers are viral illnesses such as those that cause the common cold. A variety of exogenous determinants of asthma were also been, some of which are air pollution, tobacco smoking, diet, occupation and respiratory infection, these pollutants may serve as inciters or triggers of asthmatic reaction in airways that are already hyper responsive, they may exert direct toxic influence on the respiratory epithelium or may augment or modify immune responses to inhaled antigens. During an asthma episode, inflamed airways react to environmental triggers such as smoke, dust, or pollen. The airways narrow and produce excess mucus, making it difficult to breathe. In essence, asthma is the result of an immune response in the bronchial airways. As according to the World Health Organization over 80% of the people in developing countries depend upon traditional medicine for their primary health care. Medicinal plants are considered as source of various alkaloids and other chemical substances essential for mankind.

Mitochondria are key energy generators in most eukaryotic cells. In recent years a number of mitochondrial genomes have been completely sequenced, contributing to the knowledge of molecular features related to function and evolution of this peculiar genome (Boore, 1999). The pathways of mitochondrial DNA evolution are obscured by their extraordinary size. Gene content, gene rearrangement and mode of expression are the characteristics of mitochondrial genomes. The mitochondrial genomes from eukaryotes reveal large size differences between animal, fungal and plant species. The average size of animal mtDNA is ~ 16 kb (Boore, 1999), whereas plant mtDNAs range from 200 to 2500 kb (Palmer, 1990). The size of fungal mtDNA’s range from 19 kb to 176 kb (Hudspeth, 1995).The mtDNA genome has a limited number of protein coding genes such as NADH ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ND2 to ND5), cytochrome c oxidase (COX), succinate dehydrogenease (SDH), ATP synthase (ATP6), cytochrome (CYTB), etc. Among non-coding genes only rRNA and tRNA genes are found.Ribosomal RNA (rRNA) is a component of the ribosomes, the protein synthetic factories in the cell. rRNA molecules are extremely abundant. They make up at least 80% of the RNA molecules found in a typical eukaryotic cell. Synthesis of the three nucleolar rRNA molecules is unusual as they are made on one primary transcript that is chopped up into three mature rRNA molecules.

In the context of molecular biology, a consensus sequence is the minimum nucleotide sequence that shows the characteristics common to most members of the family among a set of related genetic sequences.It serves in representing the results of a multiple sequence alignment, where related sequences are compared to each other, and similar functional sequence motifs are found. It also shows conserved/variable residues. It is found several times in the genome and is thought to play the same role in its different locations. For example, many transcription factors recognize particular consensus sequences in the promoters of the genes they regulate. In the same way restriction enzymes usually have palindromic consensus sequences, usually corresponding to the site where they cut the DNA. Transposons act in much the same manner in their identification of target sequences for transposition. Splice sites, i.e. those sequences immediately surrounding the exon-intron boundaries, can also be considered as consensus sequences. Defining a consensus DNA binding site by examining consensus sequences is a key work carried out by biologists (Harley et al., 1994). Rareness or anomaly detection followed by in depth analyses in such sequences may reveal significant information regarding the structural, functional and biochemical mechanisms of the genes which are of much importance to biologists.

Abstract
In-silico analysis of nucleic acids and proteins from fishes has enriched our understanding to several fundamental problems of classical fish biology and genetics. Mining of data which is analogous to information discovery is the process of automating knowledge discovery. Analysis of data in all possible manner and recognition of a pattern which has a scientific basis by an efficient algorithm is the fundamental principle of Bioinformatics. Ever increasing number of Bioinformatics tools as computational packages are now a days used in tandem to analyze sequence of a loci and to model a novel gene product. High efficiency algorithms with excellent homology searching functions have lead to this advancement. Cat fishes, a group of diverse bony fishes have been studied with respect to genetic analysis in several species and several peptides. Tracking of the evolutionary foot prints using genomic libraries and between expressed sequences has been generating much interest.

Introduction

Spatial planning tools brings together multiple users of the earth to make informed and coordinated decisions about how to use of resources  and helps to organize, analyze and present information from a number of different sources.  Thus, viewing from single interest or multiple use viewpoints is enhanced and can make a very important contribution to environment. Use of Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) tools has the capacity to bring together experts from a variety of disciplines to address complex spatial problems.

Introduction
Science and its development have had a great impact on the biological research. The main problem arises to understand and interpret the data which are the results of the higher dimensional research in the above mentioned field, and it is extremely difficult some times to give answers for complex and tedious biological questions generated through the large datasets. Parallel developments of statistical methods provide relaxation over these issues. The statistical method by bioinformatics presents many new and logical problems for researchers, scientists, and scholars related to these communities. Thus the knowledge of statistical concepts and techniques are prime important in this chain. The effort is made to cover stochastic theory, finite Markov chains in learning models to diffusion processes in population genetics, advanced statistical methods with Hidden Markov model and provide some literature on Bayesian computation like MCMC and their resources. Fortunately the applied aspect of probability theory and theory of stochastic processes seem to have been extensively used in the research and development level of biological field but the lacking of required material is a very problematic aspect in the system with proper and systematic ways.

Introduction

The proteome is often described as the set of all expressed proteins in a cell, tissue or organism. It is the systematic analysis of cellular proteins, that is, their identity, quantity and function. One advantage of proteomics over transcriptome is that mRNA represents an early stage of gene expression whereas the study at the proteome level describes the state of protein which is the final functional molecule of the cell. Thus, it gives a clear picture of the cell function that may not be concluded from mRNA study. In fact we can say that proteins are more than just information carriers so it gives more information with respect to only nucleic acid based studies.  Proteomics covers two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE), image analysis, mass spectrometry, amino acid sequencing, and bio-informatics to resolve comprehensively, to quantify, and to characterize proteins. Biomarker discovery as an important aspect of proteomics technology is highly appreciable when it comes to diseases. Today,  a better understanding of the disease mechanisms leading to discovery of new disease specific biomarkers are very much possible due to the sequencing of the human genome. It has accelerated the proteomic technologies for accepting the challenges so as to meet the diseased related investigations.

Objectives
    
·    Creation and use of large databases of Biological information to augment traditional laboratory based biology.
    
·    Analysis and interpretation of genomic and structural data using computational techniques from Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science.
    
·    Explain the process and mechanism of evolution by comparing the Genomes of different species.
    
·    Development of new methods and technologies for understanding and diagnosis of genetic diseases and design of drugs for their treatment.

Biological sequences like the nucleotide and amino acid sequences can be analyzed by means of the sequence alignment. The objective behind this is to obtain knowledge regarding the similarity between the query and the target sequence to decipher the structure, function, homology of the query sequence.

The analysis of chromosome behaviour at meiosis can provide valuable information about the genomic composition of both species and hybrids. The basis for this analysis is the idea that chromosomes that pair and undergo chiasma formation are homologous. Where two genomes are present, as in diploids, the expectation is that only bivalents will be observed and where there are multiple genomes, as in polyploids, two general patterns of pairing are possible. In autopolyploids, configurations of multiple chromosomes are to be expected since all the component genomes are homologous and have the possibility of pairing with each other, whereas in allopolyploids, with different genomes, bivalent formation is the expectation. Thus, meiotic analysis can provide an oversight for genome analysis to investigate genetic relationships between the species. Further, chromosomal rearrangements are correlated with pollen fertility in species and F₁ hybrids.  Observations on pollen formation, size and viability can provide useful information, as low pollen viability is often indicative of meiotic irregularities and large sized pollen can indicate the formation of unreduced gametes. In addition, the occurrence of nucleolar dominance has been recorded in many interspecific hybrids.

Computation has become an essential tool in life science research. This is exemplified in genomics, where first microarrays and now massively parallel DNA sequencing have enabled a variety of genome-wide functional assays that require increasingly complex analysis tools. The problem of accessibility of computational tools has long been recognized. Without programming or informatics expertise, scientists needing to use computational approaches are impeded by problems ranging from tool installation; to determining which parameter values to use; to efficiently combining multiple tools together in an analysis chain. The severity of these problems is evidenced by the numerous solutions to address them. Kowledge on software  and web-based interfaces for tools all improve the accessibility of computation. These approaches each have advantages, but do not offer a general solution that enables a computational tool to be easily included in an analysis chain and run by scientists without programming experience.However, making tools accessible does not necessarily address the crucial problem of reproducibility.