NEW YORK | Fri Jan 18, 2013 6:01pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Life Technologies Corp (LIFE.O) is exploring a potential sale and has retained banks to advise on the process, the biotechnology company said on Friday, sending its shares more than 10 percent higher to an all-time record.

Life Technologies, whose market value surged to roughly $10.5 billion, said its board has hired Deutsche Bank Securities (DBKGn.DE) and Moelis & Company to assist in its "annual strategic review."

The Carlsbad, California-based company, which makes genetic testing equipment and products used in biotechnology development, has drawn initial interest from several large private equity firms, people familiar with the matter said.

Buyout firms Blackstone Group LP (BX.N), Bain Capital LLC and TPG Capital LP are among the several interested parties, said the people, who asked not to be named as details of the auction are not public. Life Technologies said its board of directors has not decided on any specific course of action.

Given the sheer size of a potential leveraged buyout, private equity firms are expected to team up as the sale process advances, the people said, adding that the auction is still at an early stage and bidders have yet to conduct due diligence.

Representatives of Blackstone were not immediately available for comment, while TPG and Bain declined to comment.

News of the potential sale adds to expectations that robust debt financing markets could lead to a return of the mega leveraged buyouts, which have remained elusive since the 2008 financial crisis.

In another potential deal that would mark the largest private equity deal since the global financial crisis, buyout firm Silver Lake Partners is in discussions to take Dell Inc (DELL.O) private, people familiar with the matter have said.

Gene-sequencing companies such as Life Technologies have become takeover targets over the last year by potential buyers seeking to acquire the technology that can be used to analyze a person's DNA and help provide personalized medicine.

Last year, Roche Holding AG (ROG.VX) made a hostile attempt, unsuccessfully, to buy San Diego-based gene sequencing company Illumina Inc (ILMN.O). Shares of Illumina fell 1 percent to $51.03 on Friday, valuing the company at nearly $6.4 billion.

Shares of Life Technologies rose 10.6 percent to $60.79 on the Nasdaq stock market, after reaching an all-time high of $62 during the session.

Canadian newspaper Financial Post, which earlier reported the sale process, said a potential deal for Life Technologies could come in the $65-$75 per share range.

"While price talk is reported to be in the $65 to $75 range, our initial analysis suggests an LBO transaction valuing Life's equity in the $50 to $60 range is at present more realistic," Jefferies & Co analyst Jon Wood said in a note.

While the company's strong revenue, scalable operating model and capital efficiency may support a higher sale price, buyers had less appetite for risk following the 2008 financial crisis, Wood added.

(Reporting by Soyoung Kim in New York, additional reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore,; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, M.D. Golan, Gunna Dickson and David Gregorio)

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Mon Jan 7, 2013 5:06pm EST

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA's Kepler space telescope has uncovered another 461 potential new planets, most of which are the size of Earth or a few times larger, scientists said on Monday.

The announcement brings Kepler's head count to 2,740 candidate new worlds, 105 of which have been confirmed.

"Two years ago we had around 1,200 candidate planet objects. A year later, we added a significant number of new objects and saw the trend of huge numbers of very small planets ... twice the size of Earth and smaller," Kepler astronomer Christopher Burke told a news conference webcast from the American Astronomical Society conference in Long Beach, California.

With the addition of 461 new candidate planets, collected over 22 months of Kepler telescope observations, the proliferation of smaller planets continues.

The new targets include what appears to be a planet about 1.5 times bigger than Earth circling its sun-like parent star in a 242-day orbit - a distance where liquid water, believed to be necessary for life, could exist on its surface.

In related research, astronomers have determined that about one in six sun-like stars have Earth-sized planets circling their parent stars closer than Mercury's 88-day day orbit around the sun.

The goal of the Kepler mission, which began in 2009, is to determine how many stars in the Milky Way galaxy have an Earth-sized planet orbiting in so-called habitable zones, where water can exist on its surface.

"You need very specific conditions to have liquid water. You can't have your planet too close to your star where it's too hot. You can't have it too far away for the planet conditions to be too cold. We're trying to find these planets in this very specific habitable zone," said Burke, who is with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

The Kepler telescope works by tracking slight decreases in the amount of light coming from 160,000 target stars caused by a planet or planets passing by, or transiting, relative to the telescope's point of view.

Earth-sized planets located about where Earth orbits the sun would take 365 days to circle their parent star. Those located closer, in Mercury-like 88-day orbits, transit more frequently.

Scientists need at least two and preferably three or more cycles to determine whether an apparent transit is real or some other phenomena.

"In order to catch several transits of an Earth analog, you have to wait for one more year to get another transit. It's simply too early to call," said astronomer Francois Fressin, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The Kepler roster also boosts the number of multi-planet systems. Of the 2,740 objects, 299 are in dual-planet systems, 112 are in triplets, 44 are part of four-planet systems, 11 systems have five planets and one system has six planets.

(Editing by Jane Sutton and Christopher Wilson)

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A man looks at food at Khartoum's central food market July 18, 2012.

ROME | Thu Aug 9, 2012 5:11am EDT

ROME (Reuters) - The world could face a new food crisis of the kind seen in 2007/08 if countries resort to export bans, the UN's food agency warned on Thursday, after reporting a surge in global food prices due to a drought-fuelled grain price rally.

A mix of high oil prices, growing use of biofuels, bad weather, restrictive export policies and soaring grain futures markets pushed up prices of food in 2007/08, sparking violent protests in countries including Egypt, Cameroon and Haiti.

Concern about extreme hot and dry weather in the U.S. Midwest sent corn and soybean prices to record highs last month, driving overall food prices higher again and reversing the Food and Agriculture Organisation's expectations for steady declines this year.

"There is a potential for a situation to develop like we had back in 2007/08," FAO's senior economist and grain analyst Abdolreza Abbassian told Reuters.

"There is an expectation that this time around we will not pursue bad policies and intervene in the market by restrictions, and if that doesn't happen we will not see such a serious situation as 2007/08. But if those policies get repeated, anything is possible."

Grain markets have been boosted by speculation that Black Sea grain producers, particularly Russia might impose export restrictions after a drought there hit crops.

Markets drew a little comfort from official Russian comments on Wednesday that the country saw no grounds to ban grain exports this year but did not rule out protective export tariffs after the end of the 2012 calendar year.

The FAO Food Price Index, which measures monthly price changes for a food basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, averaged 213 points in July against 201 points in June, the FAO said in its monthly index update.

The rise followed three months of declines. Although below a peak of 238 points in February 2011, when high food prices helped drive the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, the index is still higher now than during the food price crisis in 2007/08.

Higher food prices mean higher import bills for the poorest countries, which do not produce enough food domestically.

Charity Oxfam said that the surge in grain prices could drag millions of people around the world into conditions of hunger and malnourishment, in addition to nearly one billion who are already too poor to feed themselves.

Abbassian said the situation was still quite different from 2007/08, when crude oil prices were at record levels, adding to farmers' costs.

Abundant supplies of rice and sluggish economic growth should also ease the upward pressure on prices, but a lot will depend on how the weather develops for U.S. crops and how much demand will be rationed in coming months, he said.

The Rome-based food agency usually does not release the food price index this month but it has broken with tradition due to the exceptional market situation.

It did not update its supply and demand outlook for cereals on Thursday as it does during a normal release. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will publish its August crop production and supply/demand report on Friday.

(Reporting By Catherine Hornby; editing by Veronica Brown and Keiron Henderson)

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