Contents Pivotal pump Leptin limbo Clue to obesity Biotech Web site Helping hand Mapping malaria Notebook Pictured above are pigmented bacterial colonies of Deinococcus radiodurans, the most radiation-resistant organism currently known. DEINO-MITE CLEANUP In 1956, investigators discovered a potentially invaluable cleanup tool in an unlikely place. A hardy bacterium called Deinococcus radiodurans unexpectedly thrived in samples of canned meat thought to be sterilized by gamma radiation. The b

Much of what scientists know about the origins of cancer and the role of tumor suppressors can be traced back 28 years to the elegant theory of cancer researcher Alfred G. Knudson. Widely thought to be one of the most significant theories in modern biology, Knudson's "two-hit" hypothesis was recognized Nov. 19 at the John Scott Awards in Philadelphia, along with the revolutionary research of Benoit Mandelbrot, the discoverer of the powerful mathematical laws governing fractal geometry and self-s

K. Luger, A.W. Mader, R.K. Richmond, D.F. Sargent, T.J. Richmond, "Crystal structure of the nucleosome core particle at 2.8 Å resolution," Nature, 389:251-60, 1997. (Cited in more than 250 papers since publication) Comments by Timothy J. Richmond, professor for X-ray crystallography of biological macromolecules at the Institute for Molecular Biology and Biophysics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich © Nature. Reprinted with permission. Pictured is the nucleosome core partic

Alzheimer's disease (AD) researchers at Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif., appear to be the first winners in the race to find secretases, enzymes believed critical to AD onset and, potentially, to AD treatment. Considered the most promising potential drug targets for the disease, two secretases, dubbed gamma and ß, have pivotal roles in generating the neuron-suffocating plaques in the brains of AD sufferers. They work by cleaving amyloid precursor proteins (APPs) to produce amyloid &szli

Editor's Note: This year's winners of the Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards were honored for their achievements at an Oct. 1 luncheon at the Hotel Pierre in New York. Three researchers were recognized for their work on ion channels, two for their development of a novel hypertension medication, and one for a lifetime of contributions to neuroscience. Following are three stories on the winners. More information is available on the Web at www.laskerfoundation.org. Basic Award Recognizes Ion Ch

D.P. King, Y.L. Zhao, A.M. Sangoram, L.D. Wilsbacher, M. Tanaka, M.P. Antoch, T.D.L. Steeves, M.H. Vitaterna, J.M. Kornhauser, P.L. Lowrey, F.W. Turek, J.S. Takahashi, "Positional cloning of the mouse circadian Clock gene," Cell, 89:641-53, May 16, 1997. (Cited in more than 160 papers since publication) Comments by Joseph S. Takahashi, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and professor of neurobiology and physiology at Northwestern University This paper proved to be as significant for

Despite the presence of Hurricane Floyd and the resulting absence of more than half of the members, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) convened its 34th meeting Sept. 16-17 in Arlington, Va. The location of the meeting--a modest, drab hotel conference room--belied the serious subject matter of the day: "international bioethics," a preliminary consideration of bioethical regulations for research that runs between borders and cultures. It's the latest of an array of tough topics t

The banded Gila monster's saliva may help provide a new treatment for type II diabetes mellitus. NEW TREATMENT FOR DIABETES II? A chemical in the saliva of the Gila monster Heloderma suspectum that helps digest gigantic meals may provide a new treatment for type II diabetes mellitus. The Gila monster is one of only two venomous lizards and hails from the Phoenix, Ariz., area, coincidentally the home of the Pima Indians, who have the world's highest incidence of type II diabetes." John Eng, a

At the recent theme symposium of the 1999 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks held in Washington, D.C., neurobiologists, psychologists, and engineers presented a wide variety of research projects attempting to make sense of the human brain. But despite the variance among disciplines and approaches, the symposium, entitled "Neuronal Ensembles: Paradigm Shifts in Cognitive Modeling," had a common thread: elucidating brain function by examining the behavior of groups of neurons rathe

SNP CENTRAL: A genetics researcher takes to the bench at the Wellcome Trust's Sanger Centre in Cambridge, England. The sequencing center and its London sponsor provided key leadership in the SNP Consortium, a public-private venture to find and map 300,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms. The Wellcome Trust helped entice 10 pharmaceutical firms to join the consortium by putting up $14 million of the project's estimated $45 million price tag. The Sanger Centre will provide much of the radiation h

ALZHEIMER'S VACCINE It's the classic vaccine approach: Get protection against a disease by training the body's immune system, using a bit of the disease itself, to respond to infection in force. Typically applied to infectious diseases such as smallpox or polio, immune system-boosting treatments have more recently been aimed at cancerous tumors. Now a recent paper suggests that Alzheimer's disease (AD) might be effectively treated by priming the immune system with a form of the damaging, neuro

William Stetler-Stevenson Find a way to control cell movement, and you've got an excellent weapon in the fights against tumorigenesis and inflammation, an excellent clue as to how organisms develop, and an excellent tool in developing tissue-growth and wound-repair therapies. One particular family of enzymes, called matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), may hold much of the key to such a weapon. When first studied in the 1940s, matrix degradation was actually more important to the leather indus