Indian scientists helped rewrite a 50-year-old biological rule of bacterial gene regulation and unveiled new paths for understanding bacterial gene regulation and its evolution. The Ministry of Science and Technology said that this could help design better antibiotics or regulatory inhibitors that block infection mechanisms and design microorganisms that produce biofuels, biodegradable plastics, or therapeutic compounds efficiently. The Ministry said that for nearly 50 years, biology has related the story of how bacteria turn their genes on with the help of the so-called sigma cycle. Sigma Cycle is a factor that binds RNA polymerase to initiate transcription and then dissociates to allow elongation.