The Scientist - Home

Researchers still worried that implementing clinical trial law will harm academic research

PhD candidates say Max Planck Society denies foreign students the same status as Germans

Scientific groups angry at loss of Elizabeth Blackburn from group considering stem cells

A long-term investment strategy offers some welcome stability, leading scientists say

- Christine Bahls

Courtesy of Steven BlockIt had long been assumed that motor proteins would advance in discrete steps. However, the steps posed a challenge for measurement because they were small enough to be comparable to the background noise due to the Brownian (thermal) motion. During 1993, together with graduate student Karel Svoboda, postdoc Christoph Schmidt, and kinesin codiscoverer Bruce Schnapp, I set out to show that kinesin moved in a stepwise fashion along microtubules, and to measure the size of tho

Digital VisionIn April 2003, the UK's Medical Research Council established a task force to assess possible future research models for the council's National Institute of Medical Research. "We've been looking ... for any hard data that helps us look at the relative merits of different models," says MRC task force secretary David Smith, "and we're not finding it." While the council gathered lots of anecdotal material, Smith continues, "I don't think it obviously leads to any clear conclusion.No wo

Courtesy of Chrissa KioussiLike ants marching to an unspoken command, embryonic heart cells follow distinct orders for organ formation, according to a group at the Pasteur Institute. Although many cardiac regulator genes have been isolated, researchers do not understand the cellular mechanisms that form a four-chambered heart from a simple tube. To track dividing cells in an embryonic mouse heart, researchers in Margaret Buckingham's lab created a transgenic line harboring an inactivated reporte

Courtesy of Steve Scadding and Sandra AckerleyResearchers aren't sure whether chromosomes maintain their place in the nucleus through mitosis or get lost in the shuffle. Biochemist Wendy Bickmore says it's the latter. Last March, two German research teams reached opposite conclusions about the heritability of chromatin organization – where chromosomes are within the nucleus and in relation to each other.1 Now Bickmore and colleagues in the Medical Research Council's Human Genetics Unit, Ed

The copiousness of the Drosophila Down Syndrome cell adhesion molecule (Dscam), puzzles geneticists. Through alternative splicing, Dscam can produce 38,016 unique protein isoforms. Yet, no one has discerned a reason for such bounty. Andrew Chess and postdoc Guilherme Neves, at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, suggest that Dscam variants may serve as identity signatures to help individual neurons discern self from non-self.1In the study, microarray data revealed temporal and spati

ANATOMY OF A HYDROGELReprinted with permissions from Nature MaterialsA top and side view of the crystal lattices of the hydrogel shows the interdigitated biomolecular structure. Grey: carbon; red: oxygen; light blue: nitrogen; dark blue: oxygen of water molecules. The red dashed lines represent hydrogen-bonding networks.Put a piece of DNA on a clean, DNAase-free piece of glass, and it will probably still be there in its original state hours later. Proteins, though, are much less forgiving. They

Courtesy of ReifyHigh-content imaging systems for cell-based assays have proliferated in the past year, but so far none of the systems available allows users to directly quantify dynamic processes such as muscle contraction or cellular migration. To analyze these events, users generally have to monitor the cells throughout the course of the experiment. But a new imaging system developed by Cambridge, Mass.-based Reify http://www.reifycorp.com promises to change all that."The approaches that are