The Scientist

An exon, the basic unit of DNA that gets shuffled around during evolution, has an average coding capacity of 40 amino acids, or roughly half of a small folded protein domain. Exon exchange between homologous proteins can lead to slightly altered proteins, but in the August 29 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Riechmann and Winter ask whether shuffling between unrelated sequences can generate new folds (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2000, 97:10068-10073). Their starting material is DNA enc

0 Comments

Female Trinidadian guppies often mate with multiple males, because the resultant offspring show substantially increased fitness.

0 Comments

Transatlantic coalition of cardiologists redefine infarction so that severe angina may now be called a heart attack.

0 Comments

Understanding its antibiotic resistance may save the lives of many cystic fibrosis sufferers.

0 Comments

NEW YORK, Aug 31 (Praxis Press). Pregnancy is associated with in-creased susceptibility to malaria but whether this persists after pregnancy has not been investigated. To address this, Diagne and colleagues monitored residents of a village in Senegal where the rate of malarial transmission was high, and assessed exposure to malaria, parasitemia, and morbidity, from June 1, 1990, to December 31, 1998. They analyzed 71 pregnancies in 38 women from the year before conception through one year after

0 Comments