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US drug and biotech companies offer praise as scientists and fiscal watchdogs urge caution

Of the 376 survey participants, 79% believe there is a moderate or greater chance of a bioterrorist attack occurring somewhere in the world in the next five years. And, 81% believe there is moderate or greater justification for the increasingly large sums spent by governments on research aimed at preventing and mitigating the effects of such an assault.But 46% feel that government spending on bioterrorism research is diverting monies from more important investigative areas, and 19% state that th

Reprinted from T.D. Brock, Robert Koch: A Life in Medicine and Bacteriology, Science Tech Publishers: Madison, WI, 1988, pg. 51, Fig 6.5Robert Koch (1843–1910) was a country doctor from the German hinterlands of what is now Poland. He liked to investigate samples from his barnyard animals under a microscope. He went on to become the world's first and one of its greatest bacteriologists, winning the Nobel Prize in 1905. Although famed for his work on tuberculosis and the postulates named af

Courtesy of Ray Clark & Mervyn Goff/Photo Researchers, Inc."I'm a potential obese person," says Steve Bloom of Imperial College London. "I feel hungry all the time and have to keep [jogging] and restraining myself when they put chocolate biscuits on the table.... I keep my weight down, but I've still got a potbelly. And that's in spite of being an [obesity] expert and knowing what I'm supposed to do."Which, presumably, is to burn off and eliminate as many calories as one eats. It's an equati

Autoacetylation has neither the history nor the reputation of autophosphorylation, but the phenomenon may pull some weight. Researchers led by Philip Cole at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine confirmed that autoacetylation of the p300 histone acetyltransferase (HAT) leads to a greater than 10-fold acetylation activity enhancement.1Cole's group demonstrates that a novel autoinhibitory loop serves as a pseudosubstrate that otherwise prevents endogenous substrates from docking within

The body's response after a spinal cord injury often causes collateral damage, including cell death and ultimately paralysis. German researchers, funded by the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, report that they have discovered at least one weapon the body may use against itself: the cellular membrane-bound ligand known as CD95L or FasL.In mice, blocking this ligand with antibodies after severing the spinal cord preserves oligodendrocytes and neurons and promotes axonal regeneration.1 This

© James Newhouse, Maqsudul AlamProteins possibly used for oxygen sensing in primitive organisms appear to be hemoglobin ancestors. Microbiologist Maqsudul Alam at the University of Hawaii and collaborators at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas found a "protoglobin," a hemoglobin progenitor, in Aeropyrum pernix, an aerobic organism that lives in near-boiling salt water. They also found the protoglobin in Methanosarcina acetivorans, an anaerobe found in lake-bo

On January 20, I joined the ranks of those who've sacrificed themselves for science: I started one of those "low-carb" diets. So far, the sacrifice has been worth it.I'd always resisted celebrity-sponsored diets, smugly thinking my background in genetics and biochemistry made me more of an authority on matters nutritional than the likes of Whoopi Goldberg and Sarah Ferguson. I've even taught the subject.But this low-carb diet is different. It prescribes "good carbs and good fats" while blacking

taken from apparent inhalation anthrax case

European Commission grants first GM food approval since 1998

Small country hopes to punch above its weight in bioscience by promoting cooperation

Autoimmunity and cancer, the Estonian genome project, and taking us to task on the Vatican