The UK's farm scale evaluations are shaking things up in Europe

Risky Trials Could Herald Cure for Prion Disease Patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease generally face inevitable neurological decline and death. But, researchers are following closely the case of UK teenager Jonathan Simms, whose symptoms have been halted after he received 12 intracerebral injections of pentosan polysulfate (PPS) that started in January 2003. "By rights we would have expected him to have died eight months ago," says Stephen Dealler, a consultant microbiologist at East Lanc

Getty Images The UK government is studying a proposal from its own Health Protection Agency, supported by prominent members of Parliament, to invest at least $50 million (US) in a national vaccine center capable of rapid response to large-scale bioterrorism attacks and unexpected epidemics of viral or bacterial diseases. According to Ian Gibson, head of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, it is now nearly certain that the government will fund a massive expansion o

Illustration: Brian Bookwalter From the massive Blue whale to the tiniest plant viroids, size extremes have long fascinated mankind. This is not a trivial pursuit, for size can yield important insights into the physical constraints that govern an organism's evolution, as well as the particular mechanisms that impose a limit at either end of the scale. Some size limits apply broadly to entire classes such as mammals, while others apply more narrowly to a single species because of its particula

5-Prime | Getting Tidy: Protein Folding What is protein folding? It is the process by which proteins acquire their functional, preordained, three-dimensional structure after they emerge, as linear polymers of amino acids, from the ribosome. Who discovered it? In the 1940s, Linus Pauling and Robert Corey elucidated the a-helix and the b-sheet, which are considered the two fundamental building blocks of all protein secondary structures. In the early 1970s, Christian Anfinsen showed that a

Protein folding raises some of biology's greatest theoretical challenges. It also lies at the root of many diseases. For example, the fundamental question of whether a protein's final tertiary conformation, sometimes called the native state, can be predicted from its primary amino acid sequence is also of vital importance in understanding the protein's potential capacity to form disease-inducing aggregates. MISS A FOLD, PROMPT A DISEASE Here's a list of protein folding-related disease catego

For biologists, DNA microarrays present at once unprecedented opportunities and monumental challenges. In the opportunities column, microarrays produce genome-wide gene expression snapshots, facilitating a migration from gene-by-gene hypothesis-driven research to a relatively unbiased "discovery mode." The challenges broadly include data quality, analysis, and interpretation--that is, reaching an accurate and useful biological conclusion from the correlations identified within the data. Prog

Erica P. Johnson The Italian scientific community welcomes government efforts to halt a longstanding exodus of researchers across all disciplines, but without much optimism that the measures will be successful anytime soon. The underlying problem is not just chronic underfunding, according to a broad consensus among Italian academics, but also a culture of cronyism within Italian academia that militates against merit. "Nothing has changed in Italian academia in the last four years," says Dome

Frontlines | Cluck, Cluck, Chomp, Chomp Image by Erica P. Johnson; original photo ©2001 Eric L. Carlson An Anglo-French research team has created a chicken with teeth, shedding new light on the signaling mechanisms that underlie cell differentiation in organ development. Chicken embryos were implanted with murine cells that constitute teeth and parts of the head, which resulted in the development of tooth-like structures not found in any bird. According to Paul Sharpe, professor of cr

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. P. Jordan et al., "Three-dimensional structure of cyanobacterial photosystem I at 2.5 angstrom resolution," Nature, 411:909-17, 2001. (cited in 176 papers) A. Zouni et al., "Crystal structure of photosystem II from Synechococcus elongatus at 3.8 angstrom resolution," Nature, 409:739-43, 2001.

Ignorance and commercial interest make a combustible mixture, with enlightenment often a victim of the fumes. Views tend to polarize and become unduly influenced by those best able to manipulate the media, irrespective of the argument's merits. The result can be an alarming disparity between public opinion and the true state of the science. No doubt, this syndrome has adversely affected debate over big issues such as genetic modification of plants and global warming. The question is, what's

Courtesy of New Scotland Yard Press Bureau  MOUNTING EVIDENCE: Candles (top) found in the Thames River shortly after 'Adam's' body was discovered lend credence to the theory that the boy's death was part of a ritual killing. The candles were wrapped in a sheet (middle). A graphic depiction of the boy's torso, (bottom) along with a pair of shorts found with the body, demonstrates where he was dismembered. In a remarkable show of scientific sleuthing, London detectives combined mitochondri