Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl's 1957 demonstration of DNA replication is considered "the most beautiful experiment in biology."

The public has been slow to embrace the word “genome” because of a continuing confusion with the term “genetic code.”

A few weeks ago I spotted, in someone's trash, Isaac Asimov's science fiction classic, The Foundation Trilogy. Shortly after, I found the 1954 giant-ants-in-L.A. film, Them, in a discount store video bin. Garbage to some, these tales were once treasures to me, although I prefer science fiction more subtle than the formulaic doomsday scenarios of humanity succumbing to oversized or overabundant (a) birds, (b) mind-snatching seed pods, (c) blobs, and of course (d) ants. The humans always prevail.T

Courtesy of Cecil Fox and the National Cancer InstituteDifferentiation, the stepwise specialization of cells, and transdifferentiation, the apparent switching of one cell type into another, capture much of the stem cell spotlight. But dedifferentiation, the developmental reversal of a cell before it reinvents itself, is an important process, too. This loss of specialization is believed to factor heavily into stem-cell culture techniques and pathological conditions such as cancer. Determining its

FLAP ABOUT OVERLAP:Courtesy of the University of Wisconsin, MadisonHuman embryonic stem cells, pictured here, probably share some expressed genes with neural and hematopoietic stem cells, but perhapsnot to the extent that was first anticipated, based on studies with mouse cells.Perhaps a picture is worth a thousand back Science words. Venn diagrams in back-to-papers from 2002 feature three intersecting circles representing gene-expression profiles shared among murine hematopoietic stem cells (HS

The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans is revealing the molecular glitch behind a rare brain disorder. In lissencephaly – Greek for "smooth brain" – the cerebral cortex lacks characteristic convolutions because certain neurons in the embryo fail to reach up from deep within the brain. Clinical symptoms appear gradually."There is poor feeding at birth, and then subtle developmental delay between 3 and 6 months," says William Dobyns, a professor of human genetics at the University of Chi

Normal people collect stamps and coins, CDs and concert tees. Some biologists with a zoological bent, like myself, collect roadkill, originally dubbed "road fauna" in 1938 by James Simmons in his book Feathers and Fur on the Turnpike. Is there no one besides me who relishes stopping to explore a freshly splayed digestive tract, or marveled at the unique aroma of squished annelids driven from their underground lairs by rain?Roadkill finds often come unexpectedly. I move most away from traffic, so

Perhaps in no area is the divide between the developed and developing worlds as striking as it is for vaccines: While healthcare consumers in economically advantaged nations worry about risk, in developing nations compelling need forces a focus on potential benefit. "People in the United States want a quick solution, not prevention, so they prefer drugs to vaccines. Elsewhere, people are afraid of drugs and side effects, and prefer vaccines," says Shan Lu, a primary-care physician who has worked

When I was learning biology many years ago, structures and disorders named for their discoverers not only eased memorization, but added an historical dimension that I sorely miss. Turner's syndrome, for example, conjured up an immediate image of the good Dr. Henry Turner. At a medical conference in 1938, he described seven young women in his endocrinology practice with the same strange set of symptoms: folds of skin on the back of the neck, malformed elbows, and lack of secondary sexual characte

People love to talk, and such chattiness may have catalyzed a divergence from chimpanzees. A clue to how that may have happened lies in deaf populations where sign language has facilitated marriage between individuals with the same type of recessive deafness, an example of assortative mating.Walter Nance, the human genetics professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who recently modeled such relaxed selection on connexin 26 deafness,1 sees a bigger picture. "Assortative mating brings together

Drowning bitter-tasting pharmaceuticals in sweeteners or dispersing them into liposomes, microcapsules, or gums are standard ways to get people to swallow medications such as antibiotics, cold remedies, and ulcer medications. Cranbury, NJ-based Linguagen is developing a new approach using the signal transduction pathways that underlie taste: The company is screening libraries of small, natural molecules to be used as additives that would block the binding of bitter-tasting compounds before the b

PROFILING AN ESCAPEE:In A, cellular peptide binding assays of the wild-type p11C peptide and the mutant peptide (p11C*) for the MHC class i molecule Mamu-a*01 show reduced recognition for the mutant. The p11B peptide serves as an irrelevant control. In B, functional interferon g assays done on cell lines from monkeys 893, 833, and 798 show reduced response to peptide p11C in monkey 798 52 weeks after challenge.Clinical research by nature begets clichés: ups and downs, one step forward, one