Geneticas, a Los Angeles-based animal cloning-related company, has made some big claims since its founding in 2002.

When San Francisco-based Genetic Savings and Clone announced in December it had sold a cloned kitten to a Texas woman, the public seemed caught between feelings of revulsion and excitement over the idea of cloning the family pet.

Growing up in the suburbs of New York in the 1970s, as one of us (IO) did, was not necessarily a good time to fall in love with the city.

State will spend $3 billion on new institute; Bush wins presidency

The field of molecular computing came to prominence in 1994 when Len Adleman described a DNA computer based on PCR (Science, 266:1021–4). Such computers could be useful for solving particular problems but are fairly inflexible. "The main problem is that PCR can amplify the wrong DNA sequences, so errors can build up and large useful computations are difficult to perform," says Thomas Schneider of the National Cancer Institute's Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology.Schneider

Imagine giving captopril, a blood pressure-lowering agent, to patients infected with anthrax, many of whom may have extremely low blood pressures because they're in shock or on the verge of it. Sounds crazy, right? But that's just what some clinicians suggested in the wake of the 2001 anthrax letters, based on animal studies showing that captopril could inhibit the lethal anthrax toxin.For a more recent example of how enthusiasm for important findings in basic science can often get the best of c

Courtesy of C.C. ChengBulged structures are crucial motifs in the recognition of DNA by nucleic acid-binding proteins, says Chien-Chung Cheng of Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. So, they're important as potential targets for antiviral drugs. They also are known to be intermediates in the process of frame-shift mutagenesis.But unlike RNA, says Cheng, "it has been difficult to obtain detailed structural information about DNA bulges, because they are relatively unstable." The most common detection

In vitro diagnostics maker to buy reagents manufacturer but keep separate R and D operations

But laboratory chiefs worry that current plans will make agency a 'lame duck'

Though DNA microarrays let researchers rapidly identify the expression levels of genes associated with diseases and pathways, they say little about how much protein these transcripts produce. A new patent (US 6,753,142) assigned to NewLink Genetics of Ames, Iowa, describes a method for fast protein profiling and quantification in any type of cell. The information obtained from the technique can be used to identify disease pathways and/or drug targets.The method involves incorporating a polynucle

Producing membranous proteins in large quantities isn't difficult, but producing them as part of a membrane is. That's a problem, since the proteins must be part of a membrane to be functional. But if you want a membrane protein expressed, "we'd be the ones to do it," says Harry Meade, senior vice president of research and development at GTC Biotherapeutics in Framingham, Mass. GTC was recently awarded US patent 6,743,966 for a method to do so.The method, explains Meade, is based on the natural

Whether aggregation of normal protein into tangles is the cause or effect of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer and Creutzfeldt-Jakob remains unclear. Nevertheless, a number of biotechnology companies are looking at ways to prevent seeding of these proteins. St. Louis-based Novactyl recently was awarded US patent 6,743,771 for a method of blocking protein aggregation using picolinic acid.The compound exhibits transition metal chelating activity, and according to the patent, "It is beli