The Rat Genome Sequencing Consortium announced in September that it had reached a major milestone: the three billionth base pair. From February to September 2001, researchers from this public and private collaboration surged forward to collect the first genome's worth of Rat DNA data at an average pace of 15 million bases per day. Using both shotgun sequencing techniques and the clone-by-clone method, the group is surging to cutting the coverage time in half. Richard Gibbs, director of the Baylo

The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation announced its awardees for its Basic Medical Research Award, Clinical Medical Research Award, and Public Service Award to four ground-breaking visionaries in biomedical science and one who changed the landscape of global public health. The Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research went to three individuals who pioneered the use of mouse embryonic stem cells to create animal models for human disease. The winners, credited as creators of the knockout mo

For this article, Brendan A. Maher interviewed Michael R. Hayden, director and senior scientist, Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics, University of British Columbia, Canada; Stephan Rust, cholesterol metabolism group leader at the Institut für Arterioskleroseforschung an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universistät; and Gerd Schmitz, a physician and director of the Institut for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, University Hospital, Regensburg. Data from the Web of

Underpaid, under appreciated--going nowhere: The buzz about the plight of postdocs in the United States flatters neither the scholars nor the institutions that employ them.1,2 In response, many research institutions are building postdoc offices and associations to give postdocs a stronger voice, but they have perhaps progressed too slowly for these workers, who have increasingly become the lifeblood of scientific discovery. Foreign nationals represent about half the postdocs in the United States

Histones, the proteins around which DNA coils to form chromatin, are moving toward the forefront of epigenetic research (see also, "The Meaning of Epigenetics"). A recently floated hypothesis states that the highly modifiable amino termini, or tails, of these proteins could carry their own combinatorial codes or signatures to help control phenotype, and that parts of this code may be heritable. Histones are perhaps more intimately linked with DNA than any other protein. Transcriptional regulati

Four pharmaceuticals have joined the National Institutes of Health to find early warning signs and potential drug targets for osteoarthritis. The Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) will provide approximately $8 million a year over the next five-to-seven years to support clinical data collection from 5,000 people at high-risk for osteoarthritis. GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, and Pfizer have each committed $800,000, and the majority of federal funding comes from the coffers of the

The idea that a virus could aid in killing cancer began to take hold after 1904, when scientists observed tumor regression in a cervical cancer patient after she received a rabies vaccination.1 Other anecdotal evidence that viruses could repress tumors appeared throughout the 1900s, but research tapered off as toxic effects outweighed the benefits. Now, recent advances have scientists revisiting abandoned notions. "It's a combination of a much improved understanding of virology and of tumor biol

Likening his discovery to a paleontologist unearthing a new dinosaur species, Vladimir Kapitonov, a staff scientist at the Genetic Information Research Institute, recently revealed a new class of transposable elements in eukaryotes. These jumping genes use rolling circle replication--an ancient process characteristic of some plasmid replication in bacteria--to copy and insert itself throughout entire genomes (V.V. Kapitonov, J. Jurka, "Rolling circle transposons in eukaryotes," Proceedings of th

Screening random mutations of the red fluorescent protein drFP583 from tropical coral, researchers at the National Institutes of Health, Stanford University School of Medicine, the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry at the Russian Academy of Science, and Palo Alto, Calif.-based BD Biosciences-CLONTECH made an unusual discovery.1 After fluorescing green for about three hours, a mutant protein called E5 matures and begins to fluoresce red; thus, E5 acts like a stopwatch, telling researchers when th

President George W. Bush announced his intention to nominate physicist John H. Marburger director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, following concerns from members of the scientific community that the president had diluted the power of the position by waiting so long to fill it (M. Anderson, B. Maher, "White House help wanted list worries scientists," The Scientist, [15]13:34, June 25, 2001). Marburger directed the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) since 1

An international group of researchers recently provided a glimpse of how disease shapes evolution in its work on G6PD (glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase) deficiency, an X-linked, hemopathologic trait that confers resistance to malaria (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/expresspdf/1061573v1.pdf). The study, involving genetics, evolution, anthropology, and more, offers insight into nature's response to malaria, which kills 2 million annually. As with sickle cell, G6PD deficiency correlates to a reduced risk

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) recently released a Request For Application for a clinical trial to investigate chelation therapy to treat coronary artery disease--a treatment that proponents herald as valid and wrongfully suppressed, while mainstream medicine slams it as snake oil and quackery. NCCAM, with the support of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), has set aside $30 million over the next five years for a clinical study on EDTA ch