Female fence lizard (Sceloporus undulatus) Conversations between neighbors in the biology department at the University of Akron have spawned a broader evolutionary view of leptin, the hormone that periodically makes headlines as a potential obesity cure-all. First described as an "adipostat" in mammals that signals the status of fat stores, leptin has since been implicated in feeding behavior, body temperature regulation, and onset of puberty.1,2 Its recent discovery in reptiles suggests a role

Peruse the aisles of any supermarket, and the message that cholesterol causes heart disease rings loud and clear. But soon attention will likely shift to another culprit: homocysteine. This amino acid is usually scant in the blood. But when slightly elevated, it may set the stage for the atherosclerosis that is so tightly linked to cholesterol. Controlling homocysteine level is a simple matter of taking more vitamins--folic acid in particular. Donald Jacobsen "In the future, a homocysteine

Disease and Telomerase Telomerase, the ribonucleoprotein, uses part of itself as a template to tack six-base repeats onto the tips of chromosomes in cells of highly proliferative tissues. Compromised telomerase, then, is likely to affect tissues with high turnover rates. University of California, Berkeley, researchers recently tightened that link (J.R. Mitchell et al., "A telomerase component is defective in the human disease dyskeratosis congenita," Nature, 402:551-5, Dec. 2, 1999). Dyskeratosi

It was the first weekend in September, and all was not right at the Washington County fairgrounds, 35 miles north of Albany, N.Y. Usually the site of a well-attended arts and crafts show, the fairgrounds was a ghost town. The previous weekend, a convergence of unusual events at the annual county fair created a health nightmare that would take the lives of a 3-year-old and a 79-year-old and sicken more than 1,000. But painful lessons learned may help prevent future outbreaks of infection by Esche

For a successful technologyReality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. --Richard Feynman Nobel physicist Richard Feynman was talking about the role NASA and its industrial partners played in the 1986 Challenger disaster, but his words could easily apply to the debate over genetically modified (GM) crops. When grain processor Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) of Decatur, Ill., asked suppliers on Sept. 2 to segregate GM corn from traditional varieties, some U.S. b

In 1977, Steven Lindow, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, discovered that a mutant strain of the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae altered ice nucleation on leaves in a way that enabled plants to resist frost. He continued the work at the University of California, Berkeley, and a decade later, with the blessing of the appropriate federal agencies and the townfolk of Tulelake, Calif., Lindow planted 3,000 potato seedlings coated with "ice-minus" bacteria. By the next mor

Since the mid-1980s, variations on the DNA fingerprinting theme have left their marks on diverse fields. By comparing distinctive DNA sequences, aberrations, or numbers of repeats among individuals, investigators have matched suspects to crime scenes and parents to offspring; assembled body parts in the aftermath of disasters; identified kidnap victims, Thomas Jefferson's son, and the remains of Tsar Nicholas' family, who were executed in 1918; and exonerated 64 prisoners, including nine on dea

A scene from the Missouri Botanical Garden The saying "if you want something done, give it to a busy person" fits Peter Raven like a glove. Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden since 1971, home secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, and author of textbooks in biology and botany, Raven hosted about 5,000 scientists from more than 100 countries as president of the XVI International Botanical Congress in St. Louis August 1-7. With Harvard University's Edward O. Wilson, Raven is biodi

Courtesy of Alan Whanger Facial image of the Man of the Shroud surrounded by "the ghost of flowers past." The topic of the last press conference on Monday, August 2, at the XVI International Botanical Congress in St. Louis seemed to have a nice mix of classical scientific observation, image analysis, and palynology (pollen identification), as well as great historical interest. A team led by Avinoam Danin, a professor of evolution, systematics, and ecology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

J. Craig Venter is no stranger to contradiction and controversy. He seems to thrive on it. In 1991, when the National Institutes of Health was haggling over patenting expressed sequence tags (ESTs)--a shortcut to identifying protein-encoding genes--Venter the inventor accepted a private offer to found The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Md. TIGR would discover ESTs and give most of them to a commercial sibling, Human Genome Sciences (HGS), to market. ESTs are now a standard

On Dec. 17, 1998, Iceland's parliament, the Althing, gave the go-ahead for a Delaware-based biotechnology company, deCODE Genetics Inc., to use existing health and genealogy records to establish a nationwide "health sector database ... with the aim of increasing knowledge in order to improve health and health services."1 The public's participation was presumed--citizens were given six months to "opt out" of the plan. By June 17, 1999, with only about 9,000 of the country's 270,000 residents of

Sometimes it seems as if genome projects are cropping up everywhere.1 But until costs come down, limited resources are being largely concentrated into what Joseph Nadeau, professor of genetics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, calls "the genome seven," an apples-and-oranges list of viruses, bacteria, fungi, Arabidopsis thaliana, Drosophila melanogaster, Caenorhabditis elegans, and mouse, with Homo sapiens in its own category.2 Researchers widely acknowledge that in the rod