All fat is not not created equal: In the past couple years researchers have come to realize that there's good fat and bad fat, and a study in this week's __Nature__ points to a biological reason for this difference. White fat, the main type of fat in the body, develops from fat precursor cells and stores excess energy. Brown fat, however, burns energy rather than storing it, and the new findings suggest it originates from muscle precursor cells. That means that "brown fat is one gene away from

New insights into how HIV becomes latent in host cells could lead the way to improved retroviral therapy, according to a report in the August issue of linkurl:__Cell Host and Microbe.__;http://www.cellhostandmicrobe.com/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS1931312808001881 Once HIV infection occurs, the virus can integrate into actively transcribed host genes, where it becomes latent. These reservoirs of latent HIV can reactivate and continue to spread the disease after linkurl:retroviral therapy;h

Clusters of beta islet cells engrafted under a mouse's cornea, showing some vascularization of the implanted cells. Credit: Courtesy of Stephan Speier" />Clusters of beta islet cells engrafted under a mouse's cornea, showing some vascularization of the implanted cells. Credit: Courtesy of Stephan Speier Looking through the lens of his confocal microscope, Per-Olof Berggren peers at the colonies of beta cells

Researchers have developed a transgenic mouse model for postpartum depression which hints at medical interventions for the mood disorder, according to a study published this week in linkurl:__Neuron.__;http://www.neuron.org/ "For the first time we have a linkurl:useful model;http://www.the-scientist.com/2007/7/1/44/1/ to look at therapeutic interventions," said first author Jamie Maguire from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Postpartum depression is thought to be caused when

Victor McKusick, who founded the field of medical genetics at Johns Hopkins University, died on Tuesday, July 22, at his home outside Baltimore. He was 86 years old. "Victor's vision is reflected in his early recognition of the inherent value to medicine of mapping the human genome," said Aravinda Chakravarti, director of the McKusick-Nathans Institute in a 2002 linkurl:statement.;http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press/2002/MAY/020509.htm "His contributions to the practice of genetics in medicin

Medical genetics pioneer earned a Lasker Award and National Medal of Science

The biggest drug makers are known for cut-throat competition, not collaboration. But last week Pfizer, Merck and Eli Lilly bucked that trend, announcing the creation of a joint company called Enlight BioSciences to help fund and develop enabling technologies to speed drug development. The company, formed with the help of PureTech Ventures, a venture capital firm in Boston, will seek out and fund linkurl:inventions from academic institutions;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/54666/ aro

Credit: © Biophoto Associates / Photo Researchers, Inc." /> Credit: © Biophoto Associates / Photo Researchers, Inc. The paper: M. Shogren-Knaak et al., "Histone H4-K16 acetylation controls chromatin structure and protein interactions." Science, 311:844-7, 2006. (Cited in 132 papers) The finding: Craig Peterson's group at the University of Massachusetts Medical

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) linkurl:announced;http://us.gsk.com/html/media-news/pressreleases/2008/2008_us_pressrelease_10097.htm plans on Friday (June 20th), to donate genomic profiles of more than 300 cancer cell lines to the caBIG database, a government bioinformatics initiative. Data from these cell lines will be freely available to researchers around the world. The cell lines were derived from breast, prostate, lung, ovarian, and other tumors. "We hope this data will further drive the identific

Gunther Siegmund Stent, whose work on bacteriophages helped establish the foundations of molecular biology, died on June 12 of pneumonia. "He was a very remarkable guy. It's hard for any one person to get a full appreciation of what he's done because his interests were so broad," said David Weisblat a molecular and cell biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a postdoc with Stent in the late 1970s. Over the course of his life, Stent studied molecular biology, neurobiology, dev

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley announced his proposal to invest $1.1 billion in biotech industry, which could trump the $1 billion already signed by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick on Monday (June 16). Now the race for the biggest biotech hub on the east coast begins in earnest. Maryland's proposal, which O'Malley discussed during a visit to Johns Hopkins University yesterday, would allot funds for a biotechnology center, start-up companies, and $20 million annually for stem cell resea

For the first time, researchers have succeeded in reversing a condition that causes seizures in mice by transplanting progenitor cells into the brain. The finding, reported in this week's linkurl:__Cell Stem Cell,__;http://www.cellstemcell.com/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS1934590908001331 has important implications for treating a class of childhood diseases marked by myelin insufficiency. "These are spectacular results," said Ian Duncan at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not