By Jennifer Welsh The One True Path? Several groups of scientists are finding clues that suggest many major illnesses result from disruptions to one complex molecular cascade—insulin signaling. ndocrinologist Kevin Niswender and neuroscientist Aurelio Galli hadn’t really kept in contact since they parted ways after beginning their respective careers at Vanderbilt University in the 1990s. But about 10 years ago, Niswender, who went to medical school

By Jennifer Welsh Shivering Shavenbaby Nicolás Frankel & David L. Stern The paper N. Frankel et al., “Phenotypic robustness conferred by apparently redundant transcriptional enhancers,” Nature, 466:490-93, 2010. Free F1000 Evaluation The finding Are redundant copies of noncoding DNA sequences due to poor genomic housekeeping, or do they function to improve the organism’s chances of survival? David Stern at Prin

By Jennifer Welsh Ekaterina Heldwein: Crystallizing killers © Jessica Scranton Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University. Age: 37 Structural virologist Ekaterina Heldwein, who goes by Katya, has followed a less-than-direct path to success in science. As a Russian chemistry undergraduate with a desire to live abroad but little money, she headed to the biochemistry graduate program at Oregon Health Sciences University

Efforts to develop Louisiana’s biotech industry are giving New Orleans scientists— and the local economy—a much needed boost.

By Jennifer Welsh Dr. James’s Fever Powder, circa 1746 Dr. James’s fever powder, patented by English physician Robert James, claimed to cure fevers and various other maladies, from gout and scurvy to distemper in cattle. Though its efficacy was often questioned, the powder had “a long tradition of usage,” from its introduction in 1746 well into the 20th century, says John Crellin, a professor of medical humanities at Memorial University of Newfoun

Marvels of evolution and adaptation, plants and fungi have developed myriad methods of spreading their seeds or spores. Some of these dispersal events happen with blinding speed, and researchers are exploring these dramatic behaviors in the world's fastest plants and fungi using ultra-high speed video cameras. Feast your eyes on our smorgasbord of fast-moving, spore-shooting, seed-spreading organisms. Blob begets smaller blob -- meet Sphaerobolus stellatus This is the Sphaerobolus stellatus, c

By controlling how many ribosomes coat a certain mRNA in C. elegans, intracellular insulin signaling can regulate how many copies of a protein are made, and how quickly, giving cells more flexibility when responding to changes in the environment. C. elegans Image: Wikimedia commons, Bob Goldstein, UNC Chapel Hill The results, published, in the September 8th issue of Cell Metabolism, hold implications for a range of fields, including aging and diabetes, in which insulin signaling is known to pla

Some breast cancer tumors may not originate from stem cells as previously believed, according to a study published in the September 3rd issue of Cell Stem Cell. The discovery is an important step in the development of treatments for these cancers. BRCA1 structureImage: Wikimedia commons,Lijealso"Understanding the origins of these types of breast cancer is not only critical for developing preventative strategies against the disease but also for developing new targeted therapies," said linkurl:Ma

By Jennifer Welsh Bright moves Courtesy of Anna Chuen Chuen Jang and Denise Montell The paper X. Wang, et al., “Light-mediated activation reveals a key role for Rac in collective guidance of cell movement in vivo,” Nature Cell Biology, 12:591–98, 2010. http://bit.ly/Raclight The finding When Denise Montell and her team at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine engineered an actin cytoskeleton-regulating protein

By Jennifer Welsh Shaping Your Postdocs How to whip your postdocs into researchers you would want to collaborate with. © Getty Images / Jordi Elias In 1990, fresh out of his first postdoc, David Woodland walked into his very own lab at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. All he wanted was to dive into the viral immunology that he had spent years thinking about, but found that a lot of his time was consumed by the other tasks that come with being

A new virus-sized probe can look deeper into cells than ever before, and finally allows scientists to monitor intracellular activities without disrupting the cells' external membranes, according to a study published today in Science. Nano-size transistor penetrates cell membraneImage: Charles Lieber "This is a paper that can bring breakthrough and revolutionary insight into our understanding of intracellular structures," said linkurl:Zhong Lin Wang,;http://www.nanoscience.gatech.edu/zlwang/ wh

Researchers have revealed new clues to how a defective form of the huntingtin protein may cause the deadly changes that lead to Huntington's disease -- by potentially disrupting the process of neurogenesis, thereby decreasing neural progenitor cells. Huntingtin proteinImage: Wikimedia commons, Jawahar Swaminathan and MSD staff at the European Bioinformatics Institute"[This is] the first study to demonstrate that normal huntingtin has fundamental developmental roles in mitotic spindle function