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Ahead of a UN debate in October, science academies support therapeutic cloning

Despite reports, police doubt Amaranth's use of adult stem cells was the motivation

In Germany, scientists who advise overseas colleagues on new lines may face prosecution

Yeast research as we know it will end with the solving of the organism on April 1, 2007, give or take 8.37 days. So said Mark Johnston, president of the Genetics Society of America, presenting on the future of the model organism at the biannual Yeast Genetics and Molecular Biology meeting this past month in Seattle. In combing through the Yeast Proteome Database, he found that so-called known yeast genes have followed a remarkably linear upward trajectory, reaching 4,679 as of the end of July of

You might call it a new Silk Road. Just like Marco Polo back in the 13th century, intrepid explorers from the West are once again beating a path to the Far East in search of China's great riches. Only this time, the profits won't come from jade or exotic spices; they're in the sciences.For basic scientists in Europe and the United States, China has long represented an enormous opportunity for collaboration. But a flurry of recent news from agencies pushing stronger links with China, plus new sup

Andrzej KrauzeIt's always nice to know your work was appreciated, even after you're no longer working in the office. Just three weeks after being fired for insubordination (see The Scientist Daily News for July 16, 2004) a scientist from Health Canada got a gold watch, a letter, and a framed certificate signed by the Prime Minister marking his "distinguished" 35 years of service, all delivered to his home by courier, along with some running shoes he'd left behind at the office.Deputy Health Mini

© Kenneth Eward/BioGrafx/Photo Researchers, Inc.Ten years from now, a visit to the doctor could be quite different than it is today. How different? Imagine tiny particles that "cook" cancers from the inside out; "smart bomb" drugs that detonate only over their targets; and finely structured scaffolds that guide tissue regeneration.But it's not just imagination. In academic labs, small startups, and giant pharmaceutical companies, researchers in the blossoming field of nanotechnology have sh

Women's greater longevity may partly be linked to stem cells acquired during pregnancy, according to a team from Hammersmith Hospital and Imperial College London.1 Fetal stem cells acquired during the first trimester and harbored in the bone marrow wait to migrate to sites of tissue injury or disease, says Nicholas Fisk, professor of reproductive and developmental biology at Imperial College. "The numbers [of fetal stem cells] we found were very small, [one in 70,000 to one in 450,000], but thes

The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans is revealing the molecular glitch behind a rare brain disorder. In lissencephaly – Greek for "smooth brain" – the cerebral cortex lacks characteristic convolutions because certain neurons in the embryo fail to reach up from deep within the brain. Clinical symptoms appear gradually."There is poor feeding at birth, and then subtle developmental delay between 3 and 6 months," says William Dobyns, a professor of human genetics at the University of Chi

Courtesy of David S. GoodsellRibosomal proteins, classically thought to function only as translational machinery, now appear to play a role in the HDM2-p53 pathway. Recent work by scientists at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston shows that during cell-growth inhibition, ribosomal protein L11 translocates from the nucleolus to the nucleoplasm where it binds HDM2 (human double minute 2), disrupting HDM2's contact with tumor suppressor p53.1 Without HDM2-mediated p53 ubiqu

COLOR MAKES THE MOUSE:Courtesy of NucleisTypical litter of potential chimeras derived from BPES cells injected into C57Bl/6 blastocysts. The "host" blastocysts encode black coat color, while the transplanted embryonic stem cells (ESCs) encode agouti. Occasional mice have black coats and are presumed failures at the blastocyst-engraftment stage. But most offspring have some agouti in their coats. Those that are completely agouti, by multiple criteria, appear to be 100% ESC derived.Instead of wait

WATERS' ACQUITY UPLC SYSTEMCourtesy of WatersLong the method of choice for fast, accurate protein purification, HPLC has been revamped in recent months. Two companies, Agilent Technologies in Palo Alto, Calif., and Waters in Milford, Mass., released new high-performance liquid chromatography systems designed specifically for the microscale sample requirements of mass spectrometry-based proteomics. Though they adopt different approaches, both systems have been hailed by developers and users alike