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Courtesy of MonsantoRice, the most widely consumed staple food grain, is harvested on about 10 percent of the world's arable land. Researchers are cranking out genomes faster than many scientists can digest them. Just 10 days after publication of Drosophila's sequence (see page 10), Monsanto Co. announced it will soon release a rough draft of the rice genome containing 400 million bases of DNA. Rice is the world's most important food crop. The International Rice Research Institute in the Phi

The word astronomical aptly describes current price estimates for a manned jaunt to Mars: $40,000 per pound. "That's an expensive can of Coke" for astronauts making the trip, says Brian Sauser of NASA's New Jersey Specialized Center of Research and Training (NSCORT). So NSCORT's mission is not to figure out how to ship food, air, and energy to Mars, but to create and re-create it up there. Speaking at a recent meeting of Science Writers in New York, the New York science writer's associati

Women in Cancer Research Women in Cancer Research (WICR) will dissolve as an independent organization and become a council in the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). In essence WICR is going back to its roots. According to Mary Jean Sawey, immediate past president of WICR and research associate professor of radiation oncology at Temple University Medical School, several years ago many female scientists felt they needed a vehicle to promote advancement of women in cancer-related bio

In December of 1999, after digesting three months of public comment on a preliminary draft, the National Institutes of Health released the final version of a policy entitled "Principles and Guidelines for Sharing of Biomedical Research Resources."1 The policy advises NIH grantees on, among other things, the appropriate way to disseminate unique research tools--everything from cell lines to reagents to animal models to laboratory equipment to computer software--that arise out of grant funding. It

Graphic: Cathleen Heard When the days grew short enough by last November to finally send mosquitoes away from the backyards and parks of New York City, residents and public health officials alike breathed a collective sigh of relief. Mosquitoes has brought West Nile virus encephalitis, sickening 62 and killing seven. Lingering worst-case scenarios envisioned virus-ridden mosquitoes overwintering in the subways, emerging come springtime to spread disease again. As those outside the Apple joked ab

When all fails, try a new attack. That's exactly what researchers do when they use genome sequence data to develop vaccine candidates against the most difficult pathogenic adversaries. Recent efforts are revealing previously unknown microbial genes that may encode proteins important in triggering immunity. "Whole-genome data provides insight into all the features of [organisms] including access to virtually every single antigen that may provoke an immune response," explains Michael Gottlieb, pa

Courtesy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Just how important are vitamins and minerals in influencing resistance to infectious diseases? Some of the best current answers to that question will be offered in a supplement to the Journal of Infectious Diseases appearing later this year. The special publication, stemming from a 1999 workshop organized by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, attests that the field is rife with research activity nowadays. Micronutrients such

Sometime in the 1980s, the emerging infectious disease (EID) movement began. The "emerging" label had been used earlier, but a series of high-profile disease outbreaks in the 1980s, combined with perceived funding gaps, began to galvanize the field. A book by Richard Krause of the National Institutes of Health1 formed part of the initial thrust. Published in the same year as the recognition of AIDS, it commented on the alarming phenomenon of antibiotic-resistant microbes. Further threats surfac

Ken Alibek People who make biological weapons live with the risk that they will die by them. Ken Alibek found that out in a visceral way one Sunday evening in 1983 when a phone call to his home informed him that the tularemia plant he directed had a problem. When he arrived at the plant, Alibek went to inspect a room suspected of being contaminated by a leak from Zone 3, the interior area reserved for culture of tularemia bacteria. Entering alone and turning on the lights, he found himself stand

A Declaration Supporting Ag Biotech With the recent announcement that major grain companies in the United States will indeed purchase genetically modified (GM) crops despite the proliferation of silly humans dressed as Monarch butterflies in the United Kingdom and here, it seems as if the public debate over GM foods may finally consider scientific reasoning. To bolster consumer confidence that GM tomatoes are not likely to make them grow second heads, 1,800-plus scientists, including many noted

Virus-Disease Links Are Hard to Forge Researchers confront skepticism, conflicting results, limited funding By Douglas Steinberg If genomics is glitzy nowadays, virus research is, well, gritty. Its latest heyday, when HIV was shown to cause AIDS, only masked its true nature. Associating viruses with diseases has always been particularly difficult and labor intensive. Cause-and-effect relationships are maddeningly elusive.1 Consider the following two questions: Does infection by mouse mammary

Graphic: Cathleen Heard SmithKline Beecham and Glaxo Wellcome; Pfizer and Warner-Lambert; Pharmacia & Upjohn and Monsanto; PE Biosystems and Third Wave; Astra and Zeneca. In the last year, many top-tier biotech and pharmaceutical giants have reached definitive agreements to merge. The unions are touted as hostile or friendly, strategic or tactical, market driven, Machiavellian, culturally astute, even desperate. Competition has forced drug companies to up the ante for blockbuster development