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Are India's scientists “spoilt brats” who need to be put in their place? Or are they being manipulated by power-hungry politicians? Anil Agarwal reviews the beleagured state of science in India at the end of the two-year government of Mr Moraji Desai, who resigned as Prime Minister last month.
The idea of the botanical gene bank, where seeds of rare and endangered plants are kept dormant in the deep freeze, to be revived when required, is now widely accepted. Here Dr B.N. Veprintsev of the Institute of Biological Physics and Dr Natalia Rott of the Institute of Developmental Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, argue that similar gene banks should be started immediately for rare and endangered animal species and speculate on how it might be possible in the future to reconstruct extinct animals from their germ cells stored in such a bank.