The last week has seen the appearance of two interesting reports on the use of linkurl:metagenomics;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23800/ to probe the biology of microbial communities ? reports that demonstrate the emerging power of this technique to untangle metabolic mysteries in organisms that cannot be grown in the lab. The first, linkurl:published Sept. 17;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature05192.html in __Nature__, involves the annelid worm, __Olav

The microarray research community and industry got a big boost last week with the release by the linkurl:Microarray Quality Control (MAQC) Project;http://www.fda.gov/nctr/science/centers/toxicoinformatics/maqc/ Consortium, of a massive collection of data attesting to the reproducibility and reliability of microarray-based gene-expression profiling. Attempting to lay to rest, once and for all, the question of linkurl:microarray data reliability and reproducibility;http://www.the-scientist.com/a

A linkurl:paper;http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0604351103 published this week in PNAS provides a possible glimpse at the near-term future of linkurl:next-gen sequencing;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23051/ technologies. Susanne Goldberg, Justin Johnson, and colleagues at the J. Craig Venter Institute compared the cost of sequencing six marine microbial genomes using traditional Sanger sequencing chemistry (using an Applied Biosystems 3730xl), 454 Life Sciences? pyrosequ

Proteins in vivo often function in complexes, and indeed, that?s how many individual structural biology efforts approach them. Not structural genomics efforts, though: For all their high-throughput methods, structural genomics pipelines typically treat proteins individually, in isolation. A linkurl:paper;http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0602606103v1 released May 11 in __PNAS__ could help bridge this gap. The new method, developed by linkurl:David Eisenberg;http://www.doe-mbi.ucla.edu/P

A nifty paper in yesterday's online edition of PNAS could presage the future of microfluidics development -- not to mention of sequencing technology. linkurl:Richard Mathies;http://chem.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/mathies/mathies.html of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues linkurl:report;http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0602476103 the development of an integrated chip capable of performing the complete Sanger sequencing protocol, from template to gel. Lab-on-a-chip, o

Since my colleague Brendan Maher returned from a chromatin meeting in January, it seems there's been a burst of activity in the epigenetics field, much of it covered here in __The Scientist__. On March 17, for instance, I linkurl:reported;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23235/ on the publication of three papers in __Genes & Development__, which mapped the binding of the Dosage Compensation Complex (DCC) across the __Drosophila__ X chromosome during fly development. Today, __linkurl:Na

Invitrogen takes home seven trophies in fourth Life Science Industry Awards

Have you been wanting to break into linkurl:proteomics;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15735/ or linkurl:metabolomics;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15427/ but just haven?t had the resources? Well you could be in luck. Agilent Technologies will launch Wednesday (March 15) its "Agilent 6000 Series LC/MS Lab Makeover" linkurl:sweepstakes;http://www.agilent.com/about/newsroom/presrel/2006/13mar-ca06015.html -- the winner of which will take home a brand-new Agil

This week?s advance online publication of __Nature Neuroscience__ linkurl:details a neat new technique;http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nn1654.html called FACS-array profiling, which should be of interest to anyone studying central nervous system development. X. William Yang and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, used transgenic mice from the linkurl:GENSAT;http://www.gensat.org (gene expression nervous system atlas) project to compare gene expression

Despite the diversity of topics and speakers, some common threads emerged at the joint structural biology meetings in Keystone this past week. First, structural genomics clearly has hit its stride. The US Protein Structure Initiative deposited some 1,300 structures in the linkurl:Protein Data Bank;http://www.rcsb.org/pdb between 2000 and 2005, RIKEN added 1,347 of its own between 2002 and 2005, and the Structural Genomics Consortium added another 180 in the past 18 months or so. That?s nearly 3,

There?s linkurl:a pretty slick paper;http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v3/n2/abs/nmeth851.html in the February __Nature Methods__. Alexander Shekhtman, of SUNY-Albany, describes a novel technique called STINT-NMR (for structural interactions using in-cell NMR), which maps a protein?s structural changes in response to protein-protein interactions in vivo. Shekhtman presented his work Tuesday (Jan. 31) at the Keystone Symposium on Structural Genomics, and I got the chance to talk to him about i

If they awarded a prize for best seminar title, Zygmunt Derewenda would win it, hand?s down. According to the abstract book for the Keystone Symposium on Structural Genomics, his seminar was to be entitled "Protein Crystallization: From Art to Science." But the University of Virginia researcher decided that was a bit too provocative, so he opted for a more "neutral" title: "Protein Crystallization by Intelligent Design." Derewenda's point, of course, is that crysta

One thing's certain at the Keystone Symposia on linkurl:Structural Genomics;http://www.keystonesymposia.org/Meetings/ViewMeetings.cfm?MeetingID=817 and linkurl:Frontiers in Structural Biology;http://www.keystonesymposia.org/Meetings/ViewMeetings.cfm?MeetingID=816 running this week in Keystone, Colorado: there's some seriously big science going on in the world of structural biology. Aled Edwards of the University of Toronto rattled off the program goals of the linkurl:Structural Genomics Consor

A few days ago I blogged on linkurl:a new fluorescent protein;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/22976/ called KillerRed. Upon irradiation with green light KillerRed produces reactive oxygen species in sufficient quantities to kill both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. The authors suggest several potential applications, but I?ve come up with another: hypoxia research. Before I joined __The Scientist__ I was a postdoc in Celeste Simon's lab at the University of Pennsylvania. Simon works

A fundamental goal of systems biology is to define a biological system precisely, such that it becomes possible to predict the outcome of perturbing that system. Yesterday (Jan. 22) a team of researchers from German drug discovery firm Cellzome and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory linkurl:reported in __Nature__;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature04532.html a significant step toward the creation of such models, at least in budding yeast. Giulio Superti-Furga a