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William Stetler-Stevenson Find a way to control cell movement, and you've got an excellent weapon in the fights against tumorigenesis and inflammation, an excellent clue as to how organisms develop, and an excellent tool in developing tissue-growth and wound-repair therapies. One particular family of enzymes, called matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), may hold much of the key to such a weapon. When first studied in the 1940s, matrix degradation was actually more important to the leather indus

Image courtesy of Bernard Rimland "Birches" by Mark Rimland, an autistic artist. At least 15 clinical trials have begun or soon will be under way to help answer a question that has tantalized parents across the country in recent months: Can autism be effectively treated with secretin? The hormone, produced by the small intestine to incite secretion of pancreatic juice as a digestive aid, leaped to public attention in October of last year, when physicians began prescribing it off-label to treat

During the last 100 years of oceanographic research, scientists have discovered the critical role oceans play in human lives. Yet only a glimpse is available today of the vast, untapped resources and diverse forms of life in oceans. That is about to change, some scientists say. The first steps have been taken to establish a monitoring system in oceans and eventually develop a central "clearinghouse" to store research data culled from life and physical scientists' efforts, so that researchers t

WHY X Y? Cloning is not just for females anymore. The same University of Hawaii researchers that cloned 50 healthy female mice a year ago (T. Wakayama et al., "Full-term development of mice from enucleated oocytes injected with cumulus cell nuclei," Nature, 394:369-74, July 23, 1998) recently reported the first-ever cloning of an adult male mouse (T.W. Wakayama, R. Yanagimachi, "Cloning of male mice from adult tail-tip cells," Nature Genetics, 22:127-8, June 1999). Named "Fibro" after the fibro

Kim Ha uses the Internet to order buffers, enzymes, and other equipment. It's the electronic age. You communicate via E-mail. You surf the World Wide Web for everything from the local weather forecast to cheap airline tickets. Why not buy lab supplies over the Internet? With about 2,500 companies selling products to life scientists and more than 15,000 new products introduced each year, ordering lab supplies the traditional way can be a time-consuming task--maybe three to six hours a week sear

Women with an increased risk of breast cancer don't have to helplessly wait and wonder if they'll find that dreaded tumor. They have the choice to pursue a preventive course of action. The first national breast cancer prevention trial sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) proved the drug tamoxifen cut the risk of breast cancer in half for women at high risk.1 Following this finding the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of tamoxifen as a preventive measure in October

At Cornell University there is "preliminary discussion on a national symposium" to be held at the upstate New York campus to discuss, among other things, the rising costs of subscriptions to commercially published academic journals, according to Ross Atkinson, Cornell's deputy university librarian. The backdrop for the potential symposium? A number of recent significant events in the world of academic publishing: The release in December 1998 of the Journal Price Study1 by a Cornell Universit

John Losey thought his Nature paper might attract some attention, but not the media "whirlwind" of "a good 60 calls" that disrupted his life for a few days. Losey, assistant professor of entomology at Cornell University, "expected to be busy, but not quite this busy." What prompted the fuss? By claiming that a gene for a Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxic protein makes corn pollen poisonous to Monarch butterflies,1 Losey's team ignited another round in the volatile politics of genetically modifi

It's going to be a preprint service. It's going to be a reprint repository. It's going to kill off society journals. It's going to save them. It's going to compete with commercial titles. It's going to complement them. There appears to be no consensus on the effect E-biomed, a potential government-backed electronic publishing service proposed by Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health, will have on other journals--both paper and electronic. Nor does there appear to be much a

"Drink milk," advertisements demand. Fight osteoporosis before bone loss occurs. They make a good point, considering that nothing on the market will restore a significant amount of lost bone mass. Current therapies can only stop or help slow down the process. However, scientists at Chiroscience Research and Development in Bothell, Wash., hope to actually treat osteoporosis. They have identified a novel gene coding for a protein that may be involved in bone-density control. This "bone mass gene

"Thermotoga was selected because it is near the base of the Woesean tree," says Craig Venter, TIGR chief scientific officer and president of nearby Celera Genomics Corp. The Woesean tree is the three-pronged depiction of the domains of life named for Carl Woese, the University of Illinois microbiologist who discovered the Archaea in 1977.2 The Archaea are microorganisms that lack nuclei as do traditional Eubacteria, yet have transcriptional and translational machinery and other characteristics

Image provided by Genzyme Transgenics Corporation CLONING GOATS In contrast to cloning's popular image as a brave new way to mass-produce monsters, biologists have described cloning as a tool to ease other biotechnologies. Researchers from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Genzyme Transgenic Corp. in Framingham, Mass., and Tufts University School of Medicine in North Grafton, Mass., have shown how cloning can dramatically increase the efficiency of creating goats that secrete valuable