In September 6 Nature, Sofia Berlin and Hans Ellegren from Uppsala University, Sweden, examine the controversial clonal inheritance theory for vertebrate mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) by following co-inheritance of a female-specific nuclear DNA marker (Nature 2001, 413:37-38).They examined the avian W chromosome, most of which is non-recombining and therefore clonally transmitted by females. A polymorphic (CA)n repeat, NVHfp49, on the W chromosome of 53 female peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) an

A new expression cloning method based on SIN replicon particles from the Sindbis alphavirus promises high-throughput mammalian expression cloning.

Plastid genome engineering has created transgenic tomatoes, paving the way for the development of appetizing edible vaccines.

The ability to selectively kill cells lacking normal p53 activity is an attractive anti-cancer strategy. In the August 30 Nature, Kenneth Raj and colleagues from the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) suggest that adeno-associated virus (AAV) could be employed as a 'hired assassin' (Nature 2001, 412:914-917).They found that AAV induced apoptosis of p53-deficient osteosarcoma cells, but induced cell-cycle arrest (in G2 phase) in cells expressing p53. None of the proteins enc

A comparison of the Celera and Ensembl transcriptomes examines how many predicted genes they have in common.

MDM2 is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that regulates the activity of p53 by controlling degradation of the p53 protein, as a result of differential addition of ubiquitin. In the Advanced Online Publication of Nature Genetics, Parant et al. report the phenotype of mice lacking the recently cloned MDM2-related protein MDM4 (DOI:10.1038/ng714).They show that mdm4-null mice die at embryonic day 7.5-8.5. Analysis of the incorporation of the nucleotide analogue BrdU and TUNEL staining for apoptotic cells sho

In the August 28 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Michelle Hamilton and colleagues, at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center, have addressed the question 'Does oxidative damage to DNA increase with age?' (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2001, 98:10469-10474).They set out to confirm the 'oxidative stress hypothesis' which postulates that aging results from the irreversible accumulation of oxidative damage. They isolated nuclear DNA (nDNA) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from multipl

Patrilocality (in which a woman moves to her mate's residence upon marriage) and matrilocality (in which women stay put and the men move) should be reflected in intra- and inter-group differences in the diversity of Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA sequences, inherited from the father and mother, respectively. In the Advance Online Publication of Nature Genetics, Oota et al. put this to the test by comparing Y-chromosome and mtDNA diversity in three matrilocal and three patrilocal tribes in no

African elephants are often considered to represent a single species, Loxodonta africana, which is distinct from the Asian elephant genus Elephas. In the August 24 Science, Alfred Roca and colleagues from the US National Cancer Institute challenge this assumption by presenting their results of a phylogenetic analysis of African elephants (Science 2001, 293:1473-1477).They collected dart-biopsy samples from almost two hundred free-ranging elephants from 21 populations and sequenced 1732 nucleotid

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men. In the August 23 Nature, Saravana Dhanasekaran and colleagues from the University of Michigan Medical School describe the use of cDNA microarrays to define 'signature' gene-expression profiles for human prostate cancer (Nature 2001, 412:822-826).They compared the expression levels of almost ten thousand genes in benign and malignant prostate cancer samples, compared with normal adjacent prostate tissue. Clustering analysis revealed di

Insights into the function of the B-lymphocyte cytokine BAFF/BlyS and its receptors have come from mutant mice.

The FEZ1 protein regulates mitosis and tumor cell proliferation.