For this article, Laura DeFrancesco interviewed Venki Ramakrishnan, group leader, Structural Studies Division, Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, UK; and William Clemons, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. Data derived from the Science Watch/Hot Papers database and the Web of Science (ISI, Philadelphia) show that Hot Papers are cited 50 to 100 times more often than the average paper of the same type and age. B.T. Wimberly, D.E. Brodersen, W.M. Clemons, R.J. Mo

The challenge of proteomics is personified in the Greek god, Proteus. The keeper of all knowledge, past, present and future, Proteus would not give up any information easily; even while held down, he would struggle and assume different forms before giving anything up. Remarkably, proteomics, and proteins for that matter, were not named after Proteus, but the imagery could not be more fitting. It's still anyone's guess what the final gene count will be in the human genome, let alone the total nu

Tom Sargent remembers the day a student in his lab forgot to add boiling chips to phenol before firing up the heater on the distillation apparatus, and the panicked shouting and tearing off of the lab coat, goggles, gloves, and shoes that ensued when the phenol superheated and boiled over. "Fortunately he wasn't hurt," said Sargent, now chief of the section on vertebrate development at the National Institute of Child and Human Development, "but what a mess." Then, there was the time he hooked up

For this article, Laura DeFrancesco interviewed Lorenz Hofbauer, head of the Molecular Bone Biology Laboratory at Philipps University, Marburg, Germany; Colin Dunstan, senior research scientist, Amgen Inc., in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and Sundeep Khosla, professor of medicine, Mayo Medical School. Data from the Web of Science show that Hot Papers are cited 50 to 100 times more often than the average paper of the same type and age. L.C. Hofbauer, S. Khosla, C.R. Dunstan, et al., "The roles of oste

For this article, Laura DeFrancesco interviewed David Vaux, principal research fellow, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Melbourne, Australia. Data from the Web of Science show that Hot Papers are cited 50 to 100 times more often than the average paper of the same type and age. A.M. Verhagen et al., "Identification of DIABLO, a mammalian protein that promotes apoptosis by binding to and antagonizing IAP proteins," Cell, 102: 43-53, July 7, 2000. (Cited in 176 papers) Apoptosis, or programmed c

The Faculty of 1000 is a Web-based literature awareness tool published by BioMed Central. It provides a continuously updated insider's guide to the most important peer-reviewed papers within a range of research fields, based on the recommendations of a faculty of more than 1,400 leading researchers. Each issue, The Scientist will publish a list of the 10 top-rated papers from a specific subject area, as well as a short review of one or more of the listed papers. We will also publish a selection

Brain size is a lot like shoe size. It doesn't correlate with height, weight or even IQ, though boys tend to have larger brains (and feet) than girls. This lack of proportional comparison coupled with the fact that, like fingerprints, brains are unique, has created barriers to the better understanding of brain development. But recent imaging technology advances that factor out individual differences, as well as tools that automate data collection and quantitation, are allowing researchers to con

Insects rule, says Michael Dickinson, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of this year's MacArthur fellowship genius award winners. Insects, he contends, have reigned for half a billion years and are likely to do so for a billion more, considering their biomass, the sheer number of species, and their ecological impact. What really moves Dickinson is the insects' flying proficiency. The first organisms to evolve flight, insects still represent the m

Two reports in the December issue of Nature Biotechnology show that the potential of human embryonic stem cells is being realized.1,2 One group led by S.C. Zheung at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and another led by B.E. Reubinoff from Hadassah University, Jerusalem, have isolated highly purified populations of neuronal progenitor cells from human embryonic stem cell (ESC) cultures. These papers demonstrate that human ESC cultures can be enriched for a single and specific progenitor cell

For this article, Laura DeFrancesco interviewed Ian Dunham, senior research fellow at the Sanger Centre, Welcome Trust, UK; Bruce Roe, a research professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Oklahoma; and Michio Hirano, Florence Irving assistant professor of neurology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Data from the Web of Science (ISI, Philadelphia) show that Hot Papers are cited 50 to 100 times more often than the average paper of the same type and age.

Diabetics have few practical therapeutic options. Daily insulin injections, while life-saving, are not without problems. Millions could benefit from islet cell transplantation, but only a few thousand healthy pancreases (where islet cells are located) become available each year. The solution to this dilemma has been clear for some time: the creation of new, healthy beta cells. Researchers want to cultivate beta cells, the insulin-producing cell found in the Islet of Langerhans, that would grow l

The fairly nebulous term mutation detection addresses two fundamentally different questions: "Do any mutations-or, more broadly, polymorphisms or variations-exist in a given gene?" "How frequently does a specific mutation occur in a population?" Getting the answer to each question presents different challenges, and scientists must address each using different technologies. The first question is answered with mutation scanning or screening techniques, the second with mutation scoring, or genot