But, just as antibodies are finding increasing utility in cell biology, a new Food and Drug Administration classification for those products with clinical utility may affect researchers' access to the important technology (see accompanying story). Monoclonal History MAbs were born in 1975, when Georges Kohler and Cesar Milstein at the Medical Research Council Laboratories in Cambridge, England, fused two types of cells to form a hy

But, just as antibodies are finding increasing utility in cell biology, a new Food and Drug Administration classification for those products with clinical utility may affect researchers' access to the important technology (see accompanying story). Monoclonal History MAbs were born in 1975, when Georges Kohler and Cesar Milstein at the Medical Research Council Laboratories in Cambridge, England, fused two types of cells to form a hy

An open mind and collaborative spirit have taken Hans Clevers on a journey from medicine to developmental biology, gastroenterology, cancer, and stem cells.

Credit: courtesy of John Sulston" /> Credit: courtesy of John Sulston Starting in 1980, John Sulston spent 18 months hunched over a microscope watching Caenorhabditis elegans embryos divide. Together with Bob Horvitz at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, he had already mapped the fate of every cell in the adult worm from the moment the egg hatched, but the embryonic cell line

By Jeffrey M. Perkel Surpassing the Law of Averages How to expose the behaviors of genes, RNA, proteins, and metabolites in single cells. By necessity or convenience, almost everything we know about biochemistry and molecular biology derives from bulk behavior: From gene regulation to Michaelis-Menten kinetics, we understand biology in terms of what the “average” cell in a population does. But, as Jonathan Weissman of the University of Califo

Celebrating its centennial, the Marine Biological Laboratory adapts to a new era in which money talks as loudly as science WOODS HOLE, MASS.—When Harlyn 0. Halvorson, the new director of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, blows out the candles for his institution’s 100th birthday this summer, no one will have to ask what he wished for. The laboratory needs more money, more room, and more molecular biology if it is to remain in the forefront of scientific research durin

Illustration: Ned Shaw LIKE MOLECULAR TOY-MAKERS, ribozyme researchers create tools with evolutionary, diagnostic, and therapeutic applications. Nearly 20 years ago, Tom Cech and Sidney Altman discovered that some naturally occurring RNAs could perform enzymatic reactions, earning these researchers the 1989 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Scientists have now identified several examples of RNA enzymes, or ribozymes. Most make or break the phosphodiester bonds in nucleic acid backbones, but some

Researchers aim to unravel the molecular mechanisms by which a single genotype gives rise to diverse castes in eusocial organisms.

Several labs have reported the formation of bacterial nanotubes under different, often contrasting conditions. What are these structures and why are they so hard to reproduce?

PRIZE WITH A PRICE: Science historian Peter Galison has taken some ribbing from his family since being named a MacArthur fellow. One could almost pity Peter Galison. A historian of science at Harvard University, Galison is one of seven members of the scientific community among the 23 recipients of this year's John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowships. The coveted five-year awards provide unrestricted support plus health insurance to talented individuals, with no reports or proj