PPL Therapeutics Ltd of Roslin, Edinburgh, showed today how they succeeded a year ago (the delay was to secure a patent) in targeting a gene to a chosen location in embryonic sheep fibroblasts. Then they transferred the nucleus to stem cells and created whole transformed, gene-targeted sheep (Nature paper 1 and paper 2).We have succeeded in cloning sheep, goats, cows, pigs and mice, and now we have gene targeting in sheep. But it is proving difficult to clone whole animals efficiently, as the sc

Between 38 000 and 115 000, say yesterday's press conferences on the human genome.

Does the mouse, biology's model mammal, mean the human genome race is still on?

What's behind today's announcement of the first draft of the genome.

10 000 in its kitty aims to represent - and professionalize - rank-and-file British scientists.

The World Health Organisation (WHO)'s World Health Report for the year 2000 faces health ministries head on, and refuses to take their data for granted. Instead, it makes its own statistical analysis of how well 191 different national health systems are functioning. Tables cover a wide range of indicators, but summing up performance into a single measure, the report ranks the massively costly US system way down the list.WHO's Chris Murray

A private company whose credo, according to its co-Presidents, DavidFischhoff & Mark Trusheim, is "work hard, have fun, kick butt", seems tohave decided to take a softer approach. It will be giving away valuableagricultural genetic data to the public research community, through aunique public-private agreement between the The Arabidopsis InformationResource (TAIR), funded by the US National Science Foundation, and thecompany - the American plant research partnership, Cereon Genomics.The numb

Q: The U.S. government is concerned about high technology links with the Eastern bloc. Does that concern you? SEIBOLD: I am a scientist, and this is a European science foundation. It doesn’t matter to me, if a man is a good geologist, whether he is a communist or a Jesuit. If he cooperates and brings good ideas and is a good scientist, fine. Q: But isn’t science becoming more closely linked with technology? Isn’t it becoming more difficult to draw a sharp line between what

When Eugene Seibold —German marine geologist, doyen of European science policy and president of the European Science Foundation (ESF)—f aces the problems of organizing international collaboration on the linguistically and culturally divided European continent, he says he is a realist. In Europe, where it’s unheard of for a French academic, for example, to be given a professorship in a German university, any real integration is unlikely “for another 200 years.” Seib

LONDON—An organic chemist with a taste for politics—a talent that promises to be much in demand in the months ahead—has been named the new French minister for science and universities. Jacques Valade, 57, was appointed January 22 to succeed physicist Main Devaquet, who resigned after his proposals to restrict student entry to French universities triggered large-scale and violent protests last fall. The protests appeared also to reflect a deeper unhappiness with the policies of