Editor's Note: This is the first of two articles on questions raised by recent stem cell discoveries. The second article, focusing on various organs and the nervous system, will appear in the Nov. 27 issue of The Scientist. Researchers first isolated embryonic stem cells (ESCs) from mouse blastocysts almost 20 years ago, and a paper announcing the discovery of human ESCs emerged in 1998. Adult-derived stem cells (ASCs) have since become the rage in certain quarters of biology, with unexpected--

On October 17, the "American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000" became law.1 President Bill Clinton signed the bill on the last day he could do so, during his flight back from the Middle East summit.2 The law's most publicized provision directs the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to issue 70 percent more H-1B visas, which permit foreigners to work in the United States. But the law includes a host of more obscure changes that should help life scientists struggli

What can people expect from biotechnology and genomics? Ten luminaries from the biomedical arena, law, and journalism grappled with issues related to that question at the City University of New York's Graduate Center on Sept. 20. In attendance was an audience of 350 whose research, medical, and counseling careers could hinge on how such issues are resolved. Syracuse University's Gene Media Forum (www.genemedia.org) sponsored the event. The recurring theme was biological predictability. Er

Shirley M. Tilghman At a meeting right after Labor Day, Princeton University's molecular biology department surveyed the plans of its recently graduated seniors, and professor Shirley M. Tilghman wasn't happy with the results. Thirty-one out of 72 students awarded bachelor's degrees last June were going to medical school, eight planned to do community-service work--and only three were heading directly for Ph.D. or M.D.-Ph.D. programs. Recalling the meeting, Tilghman notes that the cohort of do

Consider a scenario for the year 2002: Using commercially available software, bioprospector "Craig Collins" spends a day scavenging the Human Genome Project (HGP) database for the alternatively spliced genes prized by Wall Street. He enters the sequences of several candidate genes into a software package that prints out the likely functions of their protein products. One protein looks like it could be pharmaceutical paydirt, so he isolates the corresponding cDNA, inserts it into a vector, then

In a low-key yet confident manner, J. Craig Venter addressed a host of issues ranging from proteomics to religion at a July 20 media forum in New York sponsored by Syracuse University. J. Craig Venter The president and chief scientific officer of Celera Genomics Group, of Rockville, Md., however, declined to comment on a rumor that he is one of five people whose complete genomes are being sequenced by his company, a unit of Norwalk, Conn.-based PE Corp. And he refused to predict the final

If humans are 99.9 percent genetically identical, as President Bill Clinton is fond of asserting when he extols the Human Genome Project, that 10th-of-a-percent difference has a lot of explaining to do. How does genetic variation determine a person's unique physical traits? Can it predict someone's susceptibility to a disease? Such questions, pertaining to the present or future, are what occupy most human geneticists. A small group, however, studies genetic variation as a clue to the past. Som

As members of relatively small, cohesive populations, Jews have caught the attention of molecular anthropologists, much as Basques and Icelanders have. Thus, Jewish men who reported being descendants of ancient Jewish priests (Cohens) were found to display distinctive patterns of Y chromosome polymorphisms1; the common ancestor of these "Cohen" chromosomes was dated back to the Old Testament era of about 2,600 to 3,200 years.2 A clan of the Lemba, a black group in southern Africa that claims Je

Flush with an $80 million gift from an anonymous donor, three New York institutions are creating a joint biology program emphasizing chemistry, computation, and cancer. The institutions, which together will contribute another $80 million, are Cornell University (including its Weill Medical College), Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), and Rockefeller University. Officials announced the Tri-Institutional Research Program announced on June 27 at a ceremony capped by a kiss between brot

They're in your labs, classes, and journal clubs. You may advise them, or they may advise you. You may even be one of them. "They" are foreign-born life scientists, whose numbers and prominence have increased greatly over the past 20 years. But far from exulting in their undeniable achievements,1 many researchers who have come to the United States from abroad are in a state of quiet desperation. They're caught up in the increasingly clogged and dysfunctional immigration system run by the

Harold Varmus Harold Varmus left the directorship of the National Institutes of Health last January to head Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. But he didn't leave his strong opinions behind in Bethesda, Md. At a media forum sponsored by Syracuse University in New York on May 1, he discussed some volatile issues in biomedical research: On genome sequencing: Though the finishing line is arbitrary, "There is a point in the minds of most scientists when they say, 'OK, I think I kno

Editor's Note: This is the second of two articles on the difficulties of proving that a virus contributes to a disease. The first article, on mouse mammary tumor virus and human breast cancer, appeared in the April 17 issue of The Scientist.1 Donald R. Carrigan and Konstance K. Knox Someone once said that if you want to ruin your reputation, go into MS [multiple sclerosis] research, quips Jacqueline E. Friedman, a senior research associate at Rockefeller University. But Friedman, who deals wit