The Scientist - Home

Per the request of President Bill Clinton, the members of the presidentially appointed National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) met on Nov. 17 to discuss the bioethical, medical, and legal ramifications of the apparent first-ever creation of bovine-human hybrid cells, embryonic cells consisting of a human cell's nucleus inside a cow egg. In a Nov. 14 letter to the NBAC, the president said that he was "deeply troubled by this news of experiments involving the mingling of human and nonhuman

PHOTO CREDIT: Lori Desantis, Children's Hospital of Boston ANGIOGENESIS HONORS: Children's Hospital of Boston researcher Judah Folkman (far right) received the 1998 John Scott Award from the Philadelphia Board of Directors of City Trusts for his work in studying angiogenesis and angiogenesis inhibitors. Folkman, who refuses to be photographed alone, is joined by Harvard Medical School colleagues (from right) Donald Ingber, Michael O'Reilly, and Robert D'Amato. After being built up by a New York

NEXT STEP: The virtual center "is the natural evolution of our shared research interests," says Ashley T. Haase, chair of the microbiology department at the University of Minnesota. When AIDS researchers physically located in four different states hold a meeting, it almost feels like they're sitting at a table across from each other--but they're really just facing their individual computer screens. They view slides of the human immunodeficiency virus in lymphoid tissue in real time and discuss

Cold Spring Harbor NEW PROGRAM AT COLD SPRING HARBOR Next fall, five students will begin a new Ph.D. program at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island that promises to be both faster and more flexible than the typical graduate school experience. The private, nonprofit research and educational institution has been home to such bioluminaries as Barbara McClintock and James Watson. Although it has welcomed grad students from the nearby University at Stony Brook for many years, until now it

PHOTO: Edward Derrick, AAAS PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE: J. Scott Hauger (left), director of the Research Competitiveness Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, speaks with Tom Collins, vice president for research at Oklahoma State University, during a break at the recent Next Generation Internet conference in San Diego. A distributed information-retrieval system enables desktop access to biological collections that can be used for biodiversity research, conservation, m

November marked one year since the war against HIV took another frightening twist. It was learned that, like guerrillas sneaking into a sleeping army command post, the virus could conceal itself from combination drug therapy by hiding in resting CD4+ T cells--the immune cells that order destruction of such foreign invaders, yet themselves are primary targets of HIV. But November also marked the emergence of a new weapon in the fight against these latent viral reserves, a fight still far from wo

Plant and animal circadian rhythms, 24-hour cycles that regulate many physiological and metabolic functions, are ultimately influenced by the same thing: light. Scientists are now beginning to realize that plants and animals may also share some of the mechanisms for receiving and processing that light so that the day/night cycles in both organisms are optimized. Two reports in the Nov. 20 issue of Science --one by researchers from The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. (D.E. Somers

Compared to men, women are two to three times more likely to suffer from depression or anxiety disorders, 20 to 70 percent more likely to develop lung cancer from smoking, 10 times more likely to contract HIV during unprotected sex with an infected partner, and twice as likely to die within the first year after a heart attack. Women and men are different--and these differences may lead the way to a better understanding of health and disease in both men and women, says Phyllis Greenberger, exec

Scientific insight sometimes comes from the unanticipated convergence of ideas and findings. This is certainly the case for nitric oxide (NO), a molecule whose simplicity belies its profound impact on organisms as diverse as humans and Arabidopsis. On December 10, the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine will be awarded to three men who, working independently, characterized NO's effect on the cardiovascular system¬ Robert Furchgott, distinguished professor of pharmacology at the State U

Photo: Steve Waldhauser SCIENCE IN PUBLIC: Almost 6,000 people attended the Nobel Conference, showing a high degree of public interest in science. When a group of leading virus researchers and scholars presented their reports on "Virus: The Human Connection" at the annual Nobel Conference in St. Peter, Minn., last month, the story that emerged was one of war and peace. The primary themes emanating from these talks--which were open to the public--outlined a heavy viral volume of battles won and

Photo: © Science VARIOUS STAGES: Human embryonic stem cell colonies, shown here in different states of development, sometimes include a core of undifferentiated cells surrounded by a margin of differentiated cells, such as the small colony at right in figure B. Gene therapy researchers call them the "ultimate target." Tissue transplant specialists refer to them as the "Holy Grail." Stem cells, perhaps because they play such a fundamental role in the developmental chain, tend to draw hyper

Contents Human cells grow in rat brains Tumor-busting bugs Mice carrying elephants? Transgenic Arabidopsis In utero gene therapy advances John Critser HUMAN CELLS GROW IN RAT BRAINS A new in vivo model promises to shed light on how neural precursor cells migrate and take up residence in certain brain areas, with a little help from rats (O. Brustle et al., Nature Biotechnology, 16:1040-4, November 1998). Ronald McKay's group at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and