Severn Biotech supplies molecular biology products, specialising in bio-molecular synthesis. The company was founded in 1990 by Andrew Smart, and has a staff of 12. The company’s role in COMICS will be to supply oligonucleotides for the DNA repair assays, to develop special items of equipment, and to supply specific reagents for the new comet methods.

Personnel

Andrew Smart, MSc, Member of the Institute of Directors, MD of the company, has a personal interest in development of research tools. Neville Huskisson, MI Biol, has 40 years experience of research and development with a special interest in problem-solving in biotechnology. He has 70 reseearch publications.

Recent publications

1. Jonak, C. et al. (1996) Stress signalling in plants: a mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway is activated by cold and draught. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 93, 11274-11279. 2. Davenport, A.P. et al. (1998) Endothelin-converting enzyme in human tissues, Histochem. J. 30, 359-374. 3. Singh, P.B. & Huskisson, N.S. (1998) Chromatin complexes as aperiodic microcrystalline arrays that regulate genome organisation and expression. Devel. Genet. 22, 85-99. 4. Cowell, I.G.et al. (2002) Heterochromatin,HP1 and methylation at lysine 9 of histone H3 in animals. Chromosoma 111, 22-36.

COMET ASSAY and CELL ARRAY for genotoxicity testing - non-animal alternative for REACH