Articles by David Secko

Two yeast studies begin to identify protein interactions on a genome-wide scale.

Rare History, Common Disease A unique population in Quebec is helping reveal the genetics behind common diseases such as heart disease and asthma. But as it loses its isolation, is time running out? By David Secko Related Articles 1 The novel loci include regions that contain novel candidate Crohn disease genes such as JAKMIP1, which is involved in interleukin-23 signaling, and LOC285484, which is similar to a secreted cytokine potentially involved in

Can microRNAs help diagnose, classify, and stage human cancers?

Crystal structure of "open" K+ channel leads to new ideas on how it works.

You don't have to be smart to be rich, study finds," reads a press release from Ohio State University released on April 24th, 2007. This study determined that people with below-average intelligence are just as wealthy as those with higher IQs, and being smart doesn't prevent you from having financial troubles.Starving PhD students might not be all that shocked. Want to know the elusive secret about how to quiet a screaming baby? Throw away that subscription to

Filmmaker Jean Lemire weathers one of the world's cruelest climates to document the effects of global warming

Long hunt for auxin receptors turns up the F-box protein TIR1 and a novel mechanism.

Reed Cartwright" />Reed Cartwright One day in March 2005, Reed Cartwright jotted his thoughts on his blog, De Rerum Natura, after reading a paper that had just been published in Nature. Cartwright, then a PhD student in genetics at the University of Georgia, was skeptical. Susan Lolle and colleagues at Purdue University had found a peculiar phenomenon regarding a mutant gene, called hothead (hth), in Arabidopsis. In parents carrying the mutant hth gene, 10% of the progeny ended u

The paper: G. Butland et al., "Interaction network containing conserved and essential protein complexes in Escherichia coli,' Nature, 433:531-7, 2005. (Cited in 91 papers) The finding: Jack Greenblatt and Andrew Emili from the University of Toronto led a team of Canadian researchers that produced a large-scale map of a bacterial interaction network by tagging and purifying protein complexes from 23% of the Escherichia coli genome.

A double life for the target of rapamycin muddies its role in cancer

An unusual HCV strain opens the pathogen's entire life cycle to scrutiny.

Bigfoot conference attendees Tom Yamarone (left) and Jeffrey Meldrum show off Sasquatch footprint casts. Credit: © 2006 TOM YAMARONE" />Bigfoot conference attendees Tom Yamarone (left) and Jeffrey Meldrum show off Sasquatch footprint casts. Credit: © 2006 TOM YAMARONE In mid-June the city of Pocatello, Idaho, hosted the Bigfoot Rendezvous, a conference that included a film festival, storytelling, live entertainment, an exhibit at the Idaho Museum of Natural History on how people "know

Credit: COURTESY OF TASER INTERNATIONAL" /> Credit: COURTESY OF TASER INTERNATIONAL A few years ago, John Webster heard that the US Department of Justice was looking for applications to study the possibility of a link between Tasers and ventricular fibrillation. Amnesty International has claimed that 70 people in the United States have died in association with Tasers since 2001, and "there was an allegation that the heart was getting electrocuted," says Webster, a professor

Race to understand mammalian longevity marries SIRT1 to FOXO

Credit: © PASIEKA/PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC." /> Credit: © PASIEKA/PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC. Mutations in mitochondrial DNA have long been suspected as a culprit in aging. But whether these mutations are a cause or a result of aging has been debatable. In 2004, work from Nils-Göran Larsson's group at the Karolinska Institute suggested that mitochondrial mutations indeed promote aging, and a new debate has since arisen.Larsson's group engineered mice to carry an error-prone mitochondri