Credit: courtesy of Trish Brafford" /> Credit: courtesy of Trish Brafford The human melanoma cell lines at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia make up one of the most comprehensive collections of disease cell lines in the world. Since 1977, Meenhard Herlyn and his colleagues (click to read the related story A life behind life science) have collected samples from approximately 4,000 tumors, and esta

Patents should be granted only for genetic tests, not for genes and DNA sequences, a working party from the linkurl:European Society of Human Genetics;http://www.eshg.org/ (ESHG) and linkurl:EuroGentest,;http://www.eurogentest.org/ a European Union-funded initiative to improve linkurl:genetic testing;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/14181/ in Europe, said at a press conference on Thursday (April 24) according to linkurl:Medical News Today.;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/105

Plant cellular responses are much more locally and temporally specialized than previously thought, a new study suggests. In growing Arabidopsis roots, different tissue layers respond to stressful conditions in highly cell-type specific ways, according to linkurl:research;http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/115379 published online today (April 24) in Science. "By and large, plants have been viewed as single, uniform entities," said linkurl:Philip Benfey;http://www.biology.duke.edu/b

Umpires at Wimbledon, Roland Garros, and Arthur Ashe Stadium might deserve a break, according to a new linkurl:study;http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/1172753827346768 published online this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The study found that disputes over close calls during professional tennis matches arise because of double faults in the way information is processed in the brains of players and umpires. Nonetheless, both perceptions are remarkably accurate, though umpires ar

The brain's sound processing areas are split into two distinct regions — one which determines what a sound is, the other which tracks where it's coming from, according to linkurl:research;http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nn.2108.html published online today (April 13) in linkurl:Nature Neuroscience.;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54526/ For decades, scientists have racked their brains to determine how the mammalian cerebral cortex handles different types of

The German parliament voted today (April 11) to ease restrictions on stem cell research, according to linkurl:Reuters.;http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL1147196720080411?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0 The linkurl:existing law in Germany;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/22923/ requires researchers to limit importation of human embryonic stem cell lines to those created abroad before 2002. Under the new bill, which was decided by a 346-228 vote in the Bundestag lower ho

Two bacterial species found in the guts of chickens, pigs and other animals are merging into a single species after the domestication of livestock brought the two microbes together, according to a linkurl:study;http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/320/5873/237 published today in Science. The research indicates that "despeciation" can be an important consequence of environmental changes in bacterial evolution. Bacteria linkurl:swap genes;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54429/

Two Christian groups launched legal action today (Apr. 9) challenging licenses granted to UK scientists to create human-animal hybrid embryos for research purposes, according to the linkurl:The Press Association.;http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5in0LcrQJp4_o18yGsYuhTXWyasiQ In January, the linkurl:Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53564/ (HFEA), Britain's oversight body for stem cell research, awarded licenses to research groups at New

Nature Neuroscience is joining an alliance of journals that share manuscript peer-reviews, according to the journal's April linkurl:editorial.;http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n4/full/nn0408-375.html The linkurl:Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium;http://nprc.incf.org/ (NPRC) is a group of linkurl:neuroscience;http://www.the-scientist.com/2007/8/1/60/1/ journals that have agreed to accept reviews from other members of the Consortium in an effort to accelerate and improve the efficiency o

Wouldn't it be nice to have thousands of collaborators, collecting data and sharing observations, who didn't demand a salary at all? A nation-wide initiative called Project Budburst is enlisting the help of so-called "citizen scientists" to nip the effects of linkurl:climate change;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/daily/54049/ in the bud. But is using the public as a data source scientifically sound? The idea of linkurl:citizen science;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/17048/ is

Hybrid embryos containing both human and animal material have been created for the first time in the UK, the linkurl:BBC;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7323298.stm reported yesterday (April 1). Scientists at Newcastle University led by Lyle Armstrong inserted nuclei from human skin cells into hollowed-out cow eggs to create cytoplasmic linkurl:hybrids,;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53564/ or "cybrids." Some of the human-animal embryos lived for three days, and the largest grew u

Recent comments by California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) President Alan Trounson imply that the agency may be looking for ways to pay women for their eggs for stem cell research. Currently, laws in California and Massachusetts — two leader states in stem cell research — prohibit compensation for eggs. But with a shortage of available human eggs for research purposes, the issue remains a national sticking point to the progress of stem cell research and linkurl:cloning