From TV dinners to computers, improving speed and efficiency are deemed the true hallmarks of progress. The same tenet holds true in science: Why wait thousands of years for nature to do its work when it can be done in a few months? This is the concept behind the new biotech firm Morphotek. Using a patented technology platform called morphogenics, the company has given evolution's normal crawling pace a rocket-powered backpack. Philadelphia-based Morphotek creates genetically altered host orga

By selectively activating and inactivating a potent transcription factor in a rat's Nucleus Accumbens (NAc), a main pleasure center in the brain, scientists at the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., might have found a link between cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) and depression (A.M. Pliakas et al., "Altered responsiveness to cocaine and increased immobility in the forced swim test associated with elevated cAMP response element-binding protein expression in nucleus accumbens," Journa

It once took several months, even years, to identify the role of a particular gene. Thanks to a breakthrough from researchers at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, those months have been reduced to days. By removing transposons from Drosophila and then inserting and activating them in Caenorhabditis elegans, the group developed a new technique that will speed up gene identification (J.L. Bessereau et al., "Mobilization of a Drosophila transposon in the Caenorhabditis elegans germ line," N

Aided by the brilliant X-rays produced by synchrotron radiation at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, a group of scientists from Northwestern University have determined the complete molecular structure of the copper chaperone for superoxide dismutase (CCS) ("Heterodimeric structure of superoxide dismutase in complex with its metallochaperone," Nature Structural Biology, 8[9]:51-5, Sept. 2001). The metallochaperone's structure was known except for the third domain. Now, researchers susp

Telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) promotes the expression of the enzyme telomerase, which is responsible for copying the ends of chromosomes known as telomeres. Maintaining telomere length is necessary for the growth, survival, and injury prevention of cells. But, after birth, TERT production normally stops in most cell types. Consequently, telomeres are incapable of unlimited proliferation as they shorten during the aging process. Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine, Waco, Texas

Brian Boom, formerly vice president for botanical science and Pfizer curator of botany at the New York Botanical Society, now presides over the All Species Foundation (ASF) as its founding CEO. ASF (www.all-species.org), based in San Francisco, is spearheading an initiative to catalog all species on Earth in the next 25 years (R. Lewis, "Inventory of life," The Scientist, 15[15]:1, July 23, 2001). Boom, appointed to the post in August, says the position is a dream job for him and he looks to use