The excitement surrounding cellular reprogramming and the possibility of federal funding for human embryonic stem cell (ESC) research in the US could be overshadowing another promising therapeutic source of stem cells: those derived via parthenogenesis, some researchers say. But later-developed techniques such as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) could make this approach obsolete, and the final draft of the stem cell guidelines, due out by July 7, might put the nail in the parthenote coffin

As young assistant professors in the Harvard biology department of the 1950s and 60s, the eminent biologists linkurl:James Watson;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson and linkurl:Edward O. Wilson;http://www.eowilson.org/ famously didn't get along, to say the least. Wilson once called Watson "the most unpleasant human being I have ever met." Watson, in turn, dismissed Wilson as little more than a "stamp collector." Over the past few decades, the two have made amends, and that rapprochemen

Many of the unsequenced gaps in the human genome arise because their DNA sequences cannot be read by the bacteria used in traditional sequencing methods, according to a linkurl:paper;http://genomebiology.com/2009/10/6/R60 published last week in __Genome Biology__. In the paper, a team of Broad Institute researchers report a simple, new way to fill in those gaps using next-generation sequencing technology. Image: Wikimedia Commons"There are some regions of the genome which bacteria don't like,"

New findings add a surprising twist to the already complex mechanism that determines whether reptile embryos develop to be males or females. An egg-laying lizard found in the hills of southeastern Australia controls the sex of its young through the size of its eggs, suggesting that female reptiles may actively dole out yolk to fine-tune the sex ratio of their offspring, researchers linkurl:report;http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(09)01128-2 online today (June 4) in __Curren

By Elie Dolgin Do not disturb As a graduate student in evolutionary genetics at the University of Edinburgh, I experienced a fundamental shift in the way science is done. In my first year, we had a radio softly humming along in the corner of lab, tuned to talk radio when I could help it, and top 40 music when I couldn't. Either way, however, my lab mates and I were always conversing—sometimes about what was on the radio, sometimes about life

By Elie Dolgin Year of the Compound Will a novel codevelopment model open up China's drug discovery platform? Mireille Gingras Five years ago, Mireille Gingras was struggling to find early-stage drug compounds for a San Diego–based licensing consultancy company she founded called Sitara. She turned to the "usual pool" of companies and research institutions in Europe and Japan, but they'd all been picked dry, she says. Then G

A leading American faculty organization is formally investigating the mass termination of tenured and tenure-track professors on grounds of financial exigency made by the University of Texas System and its Medical Branch in Galveston in the wake of Hurricane Ike. These layoffs "raise key issues of academic freedom, tenure, and due process," the linkurl:American Association of University Professors;http://www.aaup.org/ (AAUP) wrote in a linkurl:letter;http://txfacassn.typepad.com/files/combest-c

For the first time, researchers have combined gene therapy and cellular reprogramming technologies in human cells to correct a genetic defect. After taking skin and hair cells from patients with a rare genetic disorder and fixing the aberrant mutation, the investigators successfully reprogrammed the cells to an embryonic-like state and then turned them into the very cell types that usually go awry, according to a linkurl:study;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature08129.ht

Biomedical researchers don't typically rub elbows with rock-'n-roll royalty in the pages of glossy magazines. In fact, they never do. Until now. Seal, Eric Topol, and David AgusImage: Geoffrey Beene / GQIn the June issue of__ linkurl:GQ,;http://men.style.com/gq __a popular men's fashion magazine, 11 of America's leading biomedical researchers appear alongside celebrated pop musicians for a multi-page spread called "Rock Stars of Science." The scientists traded in their elbow-patched tweed for s

For the first time, human skin cells have been reprogrammed without using DNA, according to a linkurl:study;http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(09)00214-8 published online today (May 28) in __Cell Stem Cell__. Although further optimization is still required, this new technique, which involves only four genetically engineered proteins, could yield the first clinic-ready human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. Human iPS cells generatedby direct protein deliveryImage: Kwang-

Japanese researchers have successfully generated the world's first transgenic primates capable of passing on a foreign gene to their offspring. The feat, linkurl:reported;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7246/abs/nature08090.html in tomorrow's (May 28) issue of __Nature__, should pave the way for more sophisticated models of human disease, though the monkey models still have many hurdles to overcome. Transgenic marmoset twins Kei and Kou("keikou" means fluorescence in Japanese)Image:

A new theoretical model of parasite virulence linkurl:published;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08071.html in this week's __Nature__ puts a chink in the armor of group selection theory, the idea that organisms act altruistically for the betterment of groups as a whole. Image: flickr/polandezeThe study "contributes to this debate that evolutionary biologists really seem to enjoy, which is at what level selection seems to act," linkurl:Geoff Wild,;http://www.apmaths.