With news about Dolly and embryonic stem cells the stuff of cocktail party conversation, cloning a transgenic sheep or cow seems like child's play. The recipe is simple: Insert a pet gene into the nucleus of a cultured cell, fuse it with an enucleated egg, and voilà--a cow with high-octane milk. But incorporating genes into nuclear chromosomes isn't the only road to fame and fortune. Animals and plants have other sources of genetic information--their respiratory mitochondria and photosy

As the millennium approaches, spirituality is playing a more prominent role in medical practice. Many Americans believe that religious activity can promote health, and physicians report an increasing number of patients requesting at least discussion of religion in their treatment. In response, about 30 medical schools now offer courses in religion and spirituality.1 Support comes from other sectors too. "The Senate recently appropriated $50 million to set up five major centers to study mind-bo

Mae West said that anything worth doing is worth doing slowly. Plants would probably agree, if they could. Courtship in flowering plants begins when pollen lands on the receptive surface (stigma) of a carpel, the female part of the flower. The ensuing dance of biochemical signals and responses culminates in the flower's decision to accept or reject the suitor. A variety of molecules have been implicated in the recognition process, including flavanols, lipids, and receptor kinases.1,2 If the in

Editor's Note: In this essay, the authors--both scientists and writers--discuss recent news stories on evolution and express their opinions on how the stories were handled by the mainstream press. Evolution took center stage at the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) annual meeting in Reno, Nev., Nov. 3-8, 1998. If the teachers needed a theme, evolution was a logical choice--after all, it underlies and unifies contemporary biology. But NABT had other fish to fry. Despite a spate of c

When Katherine Osteryoung started her postdoctoral fellowship in Elizabeth Vierling's laboratory at the University of Arizona, Tucson, she wanted to work on heat shock proteins, which cells make in response to stress. Chloroplast division was the farthest thing from her mind. But science, which is no stranger to serendipity, had other plans. Plastids, including chloroplasts, are descendants of cyanobacterial endosymbionts. Like their ancestors, they divide by fission, ensuring continuity throu

In early December, Emory University in Atlanta agreed to pay $66,400 in fines and change its operating procedures in response to the December 1997 death of Elizabeth Griffin, a 22-year-old worker at its Yerkes Regional Primate Center. Griffin contracted herpes B virus, common in Old World macaques, when she was hit in the eye with fecal material, urine, or saliva while transferring a rhesus monkey to a cage.1 Though rare in humans, B virus is often lethal unless treated early with antiviral dru

You have probably heard more than your share of Viagra jokes; a whole Web site is devoted to them. But impotence, or erectile dysfunction (ED), is no joke. According to a survey (H.A. Feldman et al., Journal of Urology, 151:54-61, 1994), more than 50 percent of men between 40 and 70 suffer from some degree of ED. The figure climbs to 67 percent at age 70. That's 20 to 30 million men, according to the National Institutes of Health. FIRST IN LINE: Viagra is actually the second drug approved t

Editor's Note: In this essay, the authors--both scientists and writers--discuss recent science news stories and express their opinions on how the stories were handled by the media, as well as how scientists and journalists deal with each other. In this issue of The Scientist, we also have two other features on communicating science: Commentary on page 8 and Opinion on page 9. The "B" word--breakthrough--divides scientists and journalists as no other. Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather invoke it regula

PROCEED WITH CAUTION: There is no way to tell if rhesus macaques such as these are releasing the deadly herpes B virus into body fluids, researchers warn. The death last December of a 22-year-old research assistant at Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Lawrenceville, Ga., has cast a pall over Yerkes and its parent institution, Emory University, and reminded scientists once again that their occupation can be deadly. Elizabeth Griffin died on December 10 of complications from a herpes B

The recent award of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine to Stanley Prusiner, a professor of neurology, virology, and biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, for his work on prions sharpened the focus on the concept of data-driven ideas in science. In contrast is the challenge to the well-accepted idea that HIV causes AIDS by Peter Duesberg, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley. The two hypotheses are iconoclastic, ear

Michael Behe (Letters, The Scientist, June 9, 1997, page 10) pulls many of the creationists' favorite tricks, albeit understated or in disguise, to sow doubt about evolution. He says that "common descent cannot be conclusively proved." By doing so, he uses the creationist ploy of misstating the way science works. Because science usually speaks in terms of probabilities and the weight of evidence rather than absolute certainties, it's an easy target. Behe also takes a glancing shot at the fossi

As scientists, what do we owe our colleagues and the science community at large? With a little thought, I suspect, each of us would come up with a respectable list. Here is a short one of my own: honesty in performing experiments and reporting results (I suspect this would appear at the top of many lists); communication of our results in a timely manner (even the most important discovery is useless unless other people know about it); objectivity in evaluating our colleagues' work (for example,