Leland Hartwell, Timothy Hunt and Sir Paul Nurse awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle.

The transport of the hormone auxin through plant cells may be a more dynamic process than previously thought.

New Eocene fossils discovered in Pakistan suggest that whales evolved from hippopotamuses.

The Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research has been awarded to Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies.

MreB can self assemble into microfilament-like structures and is closely associated with the bacterial cell membrane.

Brittlestars are marine echinoderms that characteristically have five long, thin arms radiating from a disc-shaped body. In August 23 Nature Joanna Aizenberg and colleagues at Bell Laboratories/Lucent Technologies, New Jersey, The Weizman Institute of Science, Israel and the Natural History Museum, Los Angeles describe the structure of unusual skeletal structures that could act as a compound eye.Despite having no eyes it has long been observed that brittlestars of the genus Ophiocoma wendtii can

Synthetic analogues of antifreeze glycoproteins could be used to prolong the 'shelf-life' of organs awaiting transplant.

The Ku heterodimer forms a cradle in which broken DNA strands rest whilst being repaired.

A DNA vaccine derived from a sand fly saliva protein could protect against vector borne parasitic diseases.

The sequencing of the genome of the bacteria involved in the rhizhobial symbiosis with alfalfa may help improve crop yields.

Modified cyclical peptides can form pores in lipid bilayers and could be valuable as broad specificity antibiotics.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the causative agent of tuberculosis, a disease which is the world's leading cause of death due to a single infectious agent, and which is responsible for upto 3 million deaths annually. Despite the availability of the entire M. tuberculosis genome, virulence factors involved in the extrapulmonary dissemination of the disease have remained elusive.In 12 July Nature Kevin Pethe and colleagues at the Institute Pastuer de Lille, France and the Laboratory of Mycobacteria