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The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) in Salisbury Cove, Maine, has received a $3.75 million, five-year National Institutes of Health grant to develop a Comparative Toxicogenomics Database focusing on aquatic species. Slated to go online in 2006, it will be the first database in the world to provide genetic information on aquatic species to the international scientific community (See also, A.J.S. Rayl, "How to create a successful fish tale," The Scientist, 15[16]:1, Aug. 20, 2001

Paradigms don't shift easily. But in a recent paper,1 researchers-nearly four years after their initial observation and one year after boarding the journal-submission carousel-are challenging one of modern biology's central tenets. For at least 25 years, biologists have believed that although transcription and translation are coupled in bacteria, they are separated in eukaryotic cells. However, new work from Peter Cook's laboratory at the University of Oxford, UK, which demonstrates translation

Sixteenth century prayer, attributed to Thomas Nashe

Counting human genes ought to be straightforward. Tracking telltale signs--motifs for promoters, translation start sites, splice sites, CpG islands--gene counters must by now be mopping up, finalizing chromosomal locations of every human gene already known, and predicting whereabouts of all the rest. Insert one human genome sequence, turn the bioinformatics crank, and genes gush out like a slot machine jackpot, right? "No, no, no," says Bo Yuan, of Ohio State University, having a laugh over th

Shaken but not disheartened by events 10 days prior, some of the world's leading biomedical scientists gathered in New York, Sept. 21, to honor scientific achievement at the 2001 Lasker Awards ceremony. As James Fordyce, chairman of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation, welcomed attendees, he asked that they view the World Trade Center wreckage "as a reminder of the precious value of life" and that they "not be deterred" from the life-saving mission of research. Echoing these sentiments through

In genetics, certain terms sometimes mask what scientists do not yet understand, such as "junk DNA." Similarly, the chromosomal regions just proximal to the tips--the subtelomeres--have been dubbed "buffers," ill-defined DNA sequences that somehow support the telomeres, which control the cell cycle and cellular aging. A team of researchers from the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, the University of California, Irvine, and John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, UK, has used single-copy sequences in

The Rat Genome Sequencing Consortium announced in September that it had reached a major milestone: the three billionth base pair. From February to September 2001, researchers from this public and private collaboration surged forward to collect the first genome's worth of Rat DNA data at an average pace of 15 million bases per day. Using both shotgun sequencing techniques and the clone-by-clone method, the group is surging to cutting the coverage time in half. Richard Gibbs, director of the Baylo

Oxygen--the 'science-in-fiction' play written by chemists Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann--will permeate the Royal Institution as it debuts in London Oct. 27. With the premiere at the San Diego Repertory Theater in California and publication of the play (Wiley-VCH) last Spring, Djerassi, also known as 'Father of The Pill,' and Nobel laureate Hoffmann garnered kudos from an A-list of science 'critics' and respectable notice in theater circles. From Nobel laureates Harold Varmus and Murray Gell-M

The theory that a healthy diet and regular exercise can be key factors in staving off cancer surfaces again. The latest support comes from researchers spanning from the United Kingdom, across the Atlantic, to the shores of the Pacific Ocean--researchers at the Imperial College of Medicine and the UK's Institute of Food Research studying colon cancer, and investigators at the University of California at Los Angeles looking into prostate cancer. The UCLA researchers found that a low-fat, high-fib

If research involving human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) is to achieve its potential for creating breakthrough medical therapies, additional new cell lines should be created, and therapeutic cloning--or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT)--should be employed, according to an expert panel of the National Academy of Sciences. Both of these views are strongly opposed by the Bush administration, and the US House of Representatives has voted to outlaw human SCNT techniques by public and private resea

As the AIDS pandemic enters its third decade, viral resistance is beginning to counter the success of "highly active antiretroviral treatment" (HAART), the multidrug cocktails introduced in 1996. "Viral resistance is a significant problem, particularly for patients who began therapy in the pre-protease inhibitor era and who developed resistance to multiple reverse transcriptase inhibitors," says Robert Schooley, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Cen

As researchers use ever more sophisticated technology to create a growing list of drugs, vaccines, foods, and devices, potential risks stalk the process. With print and electronic media prodding them along, scientists, policymakers, business people, and the public have to consider the downside of inventions as well as the benefits. Headlines continually trumpet health risks--fluoridation caught the public's eye in the 1950s with stories that the procedure could rot teeth and cause cancer. Today