Articles by Paul Smaglik

Chimeraplasty Diagram If single-gene disorders are akin to minor misspellings in the human genome, then it stands to reason that the biological equivalent of a word processor's search-and-replace function could correct them. Some researchers are hoping that chimeraplasty can be that tool. The biological software--a chimeric oligonucleotide constructed from both DNA and RNA--was invented and first tested in vitro in 1994. But before it can be "shipped" to the clinic, its developers and others mu

Budgets for Top Federal R&D Agencies The U.S. House of Representatives delivered a bumper crop for science in its fiscal year (FY) 2000 budget--but the R&D harvest still has a slight chance to be delayed or threatened by cows. Congressional moos reportedly filled the House chambers after the announcement that Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) planned to delay voting on a bill that would finalize a $1.8 trillion budget. Kohl's beef had nothing to do with science, but rather, with dairy subsidies that he

Twelve scientific publishers have joined together to provide an electronic linking service that could serve as a paid alternative to PubMedCentral, proposed by Harold Varmus, National Institutes of Health director, to provide similar information for free. When Varmus floated the possibility of PubMedCentral (then known as E-Biomed), many commercial publishers balked at giving away their content.1 Some scientific societies have since relaxed their opposition and will allow their content to be ava

Both the public Human Genome Project and the private Celera Genomics-sponsored effort announced within a month of each other that they have sequenced a billion base pairs--about a third of human's total genetic code. Despite those twin landmarks, it's still difficult to say which project is ahead of the other in the quest to finish a "rough draft," or 90 percent completed copy, by spring 2000. This handicappers' confusion (in a competition both teams have said is not a race1) can be attributed

Not all awards are created equal. That's why the International Congress of Distinguished Awards (ICDA), a Philadelphia-based organization, published the Official Roster of Distinguished Awards, a directory of 116 prizes that the ICDA considered the best of their kind. It gave those awards its seal of approval based on uniqueness to a particular field, amount of cash prize, and professionalism of administration. (See www.icda.org.) Keeping up with awards is difficult, because most of the approxim

Contents Pivotal pump Leptin limbo Clue to obesity Biotech Web site Helping hand Mapping malaria UCSD - Salk Program in Molecular Medicine HEART FAILURE RESCUE: A cross section of a mouse genetically engineered to develop heart failure (left) shows enlarged heart chambers and thin walls that are typical of the condition. A cross section from the same strain of mouse, but with the phospholamban gene (PLB) also missing, appears normal. PIVOTAL PUMP A biochemical calcium pump and the gene that con

M.H. Polymeropoulos, C. Lavedan, E. Leroy, S.E. Ide, A. Dehejia, A. Dutra, B. Pike, H. Root, J. Rubenstein, R. Boyer, E.S. Stenroos, S. Chandrasekharappa, A. Athanassiadou, T. Papapetropoulos, W.G. Johnson, A.M. Lazzarini, R.C. Duvoisin, G. Di Iorio, L.I. Golbe, R.L. Nussbaum, "Mutation in the *-synuclein gene identified in families with Parkinson's disease," Science, 276:2045-7, June 27, 1997. (Cited in more than 250 papers since publication) Comments by Robert L. Nussbaum, chief of Genetic Dis

M. Serrano, A.W. Lin, M.E. McCurrach, D. Beach, S.W. Lowe, "Oncogenic ras provokes premature cell senescence associated with accumulation of p53 and p16INK4a," Cell, 88:593-602, March 7, 1997. (Cited in more than 180 papers since publication) Comments by Scott W. Lowe, associate professor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. Scott W. Lowe and postdoctoral fellow Maria Soengas An unpublished 15-year-old observation of an obscure cell line, dusted off and revisited, helped Sco

Researchers hoping to test a novel nonviral gene therapy system in people next year are unsure of approval prospects, following the recent death of a young man who was treated with an experimental viral vector.1 The man's health deteriorated rapidly a day after he was treated with an adenovirus carrying a therapeutic gene to treat ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency. R. Michael Blaese Instead of taking the conventional gene therapy approach of delivering missing genes, the novel approa

It was like falling off a cliff," Mark L. Batshaw, George Washington University pediatrics chairman, says of the adverse effect Jesse Gelsinger experienced following gene therapy. On Sept. 14, 18 Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania patients received escalating doses of an adenovirus carrying a gene to restore ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC)--an enzyme that, when missing, renders people unable to break down dietary protein. Gelsinger was in the highest-dose group, which nonetheless receiv

After six years and nearly $5 billion in budgetary increases, Harold Varmus announced Oct. 7 that he is leaving the National Institutes of Health to head the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. When Varmus took on the NIH directorship in 1993, the agency posted a budget of $11 billion. The budget for fiscal year 1999 soared to $15.6 billion. Scientists on the NIH campus also have praised Varmus for reinvigorating what was once a flagging institution.1 "Harold Varmus has done ever

Contents Id and angio Testosterone boost to favored offspring More dopamine To B or not to B Mice that know when to say when Viral conquest Unraveling helicase Done in by a sucker ID AND ANGIO When Robert Benezra of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues knocked out two proteins that inhibit transcription factors in mice, they expected to see premature neural differentiation. In addition, however, they noticed that the absence of those two proteins, Id1 and Id3, di

Photo: Paul Smaglik Research equipment spills into the hallway of NIH's Clinical Research Center (Building 10). While an addition to that building is scheduled for completion in 2002, some NIH campus scientists wonder whether construction alone can contain the burgeoning intramural research program. Freezers, centrifuges, and tanks crowd the corridors of the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Research Center (Building 10). In one of that building's shared lab rooms, benches li

The chemoprevention field could be characterized as being in a double-blind double bind. One side of the field emphasizes taking a "whole food" approach to using food to prevent cancer. That approach entails having scientists closely monitor everything a necessarily small group of subjects eats over a necessarily short period of time. Such studies pick apart the complexities of diet and its possible roles in keeping cancer at bay. But the small numbers and short time frame put any conclusions o

Celera Genomics announced Sept. 9 that the Rockville, Md., company had sequenced the 1.8 billion base pairs that make up the Drosophila melanogaster genome. Now comes the tricky part--putting them together to form an accurate, contiguous fruit fly genome. "The sequence data is good," Paul Gilman, a Celera vice president, claims. "The question is, 'How good is our assembly?'" That's a question that critics of the company's "whole genome shotgun" sequencing approach--blasting the entire genome in