Research Field Sidebars:
Before 1992, the National Institutes of Health did not list apoptosis as an area of research interest. In 1993, however, grant funding for projects whose title mentioned the word nearly doubled over the 1992 figure; funding doubled again in 1994 (see accompanying table).
And yet, when Barbara Osborne, an associate professor in the molecular and cellular biology program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, recently traced the development of the field, she found an erratic history, characterized by little early activity followed by booming interest. She was researching the preface for a 1995 edition of Methods in Cell Biology (San Diego, Academic Press Inc.), which she coauthored with Amherst associate professor Larry Schwartz.
"I've traced the number of publications from 1980 to the present," reports Osborne, who searched for the keyword "apoptosis." She found that "there was nothing in the early '80s. Then, in 1985 through 1987, ...
