April 1998

New machines and approaches are offering neuroscientists unprecedented access to the working human brain By Douglas Steinberg Photo: Neil Michel/Axiom Sylvia WIRED FOR AN IMAGE: Research associate Valerie Clark gets her brain waves recorded by Ron Mangun, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis. Mind-reading, that staple of science fiction, is inching closer to science fact, thanks to steady progress in the field of brain imaging. In the last few years, neuroimagers hav

PHASE III NEARS: Cubist Pharmaceuticals has a promising antibiotic--daptomycin--that the company hopes to have in Phase III clinical trials in late 1998 or early 1999. Bacteria are back. Following the discovery and introduction into medicine of penicillin in 1941, intense research in microbiology produced a potent armament of antibiotics that all but eliminated a variety of infectious diseases. With this success, many large pharmaceutical companies scaled back research and development of new

ACADEMIC EROSION: Although neither males nor females approach NSF's goals for attracting students to science and engineering careers (represented by dotted line), women tend to flee the sciences faster than men--particularly after high school. First came the age of intrepid female pioneer researchers. Then came the epoch of "supermom" scientists. So where do women in science stand today? Many presenters at the Conference on Women, Science, and Engineering held last month at the New York Acade

Swiss anthropologist Jeremy Narby counts himself among the relatively thin ranks of scientists willing to publicly announce their conviction that nature is "minded," that an intelligence lies behind the development of life. Such a position is heresy to the prevailing scientific view of naturalism, which holds that nature is self-sufficient and the result of undirected processes. These two differing viewpoints usually are framed in the context of a debate between theology and science--creationis

The following was written in response to a Notebook item in your March 2, 1998 issue [The Scientist, 12[5]:27, March 2, 1998]: Jeff Getty may be the brunt of gauche humor regarding his primate blood relatives. His assessment of the anti- xenotransplantation sentiment among scientific and medical professionals and the lay public, however, is simply wrong. There is no "deep-seated psychological barrier" to using animal cells, tissues, and organs in human patients. What exists instead is a very r

Since January 1996, manuscript submission to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has been changed to three tracks: an academy member may "communicate" manuscripts for others that are within the member's area of expertise; authors may submit their manuscripts directly to the Proceedings office and the office will choose an academy member to "edit" the manuscripts; an academy member may "contribute" his or her own manuscripts for publication. The manuscripts submitted through

C.L. Hanis, E. Boerwinkle, R. Chakraborty, D.L. Ellsworth, P. Concannon, B. Stirling, V.A. Morrison, B. Wapelhorst, R.S. Spielman, K.J. Gogolin-Ewens, J.M. Shephard, S.R. Williams, N. Risch, D. Hinds, N. Iwasaki, M. Ogata, Y. Omori, C. Petzold, H. Rietzsch, H.E. Schroder, J. Schulze, N.J. Cox, S. Menzel, V.V. Boriraj, X. Chen, L.R. Lim, T. Lindner, L.E. Mereu, Y.Q. Wang, K. Xiang, K. Yamagata, Y. Yang, G.I. Bell, "A genome-wide search for human non-insulin dependent (Type 2) diabetes genes reve

CELLULAR CLOCK: From left, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas investigators Michel Ouellette, Woodring Wright, Jerry Shay, and Shawn Holt continue to investigate how telomerase regulates human cell division. S.E. Holt, W.E. Wright, J.W. Shay, "Regulation of telomerase activity in immortal cell lines," Molecular and Cellular Biology, 16:2932-9, 1996. (Cited in more than 70 publications to date) Comments by Jerry W. Shay and Woodring E. Wright, department of cell biolog

Protein yield and ease of purification are two important criteria in choosing a system for the expression/ purification of recombinant proteins. The IMPACT (Intein Mediated Purification with an Affinity Chitin- binding Tag) T7 System from New England BioLabs, Inc., enables the purification of recombinant fusion proteins in a single chromatographic step. A major advantage of the IMPACT system is that a self-cleavage reaction is used to release the affinity tag from the protein of interest. Thus,

The challenge for many laboratories growing hybridoma cell lines is producing adequate amounts of monoclonal antibody (MAb) given the constraints of space, time, and money. Large volumes of antibody typically require an investment in expensive bioreactors, space allocated to a multitude of tissue culture flasks stacked in incubators, or very large mice. "Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door," or so the saying goes. With that thought in mind, INTEGRA Biosciences

Date: April 13, 1998pH Electrodes from 10 Companies (PDF Format) Did you know it is possible to measure the hydrogen ion concentration (pH) of almost any substance today? You name it--buffers, sludge, meat, or mud--companies are designing electrodes to tackle what may seem like the strangest of tasks. And yet, for the most part, electrodes today appear strikingly similar to electrodes manufactured years ago. So what has changed? "Electrodes themselves are pretty much unchanged," remarks Peter

Date: April 13, 1998PCR Based Cloning Kits Table The End Table (PDF Format) PCR has found applications in almost every imaginable facet of molecular biology, and for many applications, looking at a band on a gel is not enough. Sequencing, expressing, mutating--all require cloning. And as it happens, cloning strategies that work for other types of DNA fragments don't work at all well, or require inordinate effort, with PCR fragments. For example, the most commonly used cloning strategy requires