April 1998

BOUGHT OUT: Eileen Gorman lost her senior scientist position with DuPont when Dade International (now Dade Behring) purchased her research unit. She now runs her own consulting business. In retrospect, Eileen G. Gorman should have known. However, she had every reason not to worry. A chemist, she had survived constant restructuring--characterized by multiple name changes of her department--during her nearly 15 years with the Glasgow, Del.-based in vitro diagnostics unit of E.I. DuPont de Nemo

Photos courtesy of Engineering Animation, Inc. BIOLOGICAL DEFENSE: Among the tools to counter effects from biological weapons, bioengineered red blood cells (above) can patrol the circulatory system, sponging up viral particles and carrying them to the liver for destruction. Synthetic macromolecules, or dendrimers (right), can capture viral particles and prevent further viral destruction of healthy cells. Biological weapons have been around since medieval warriors hurled plague-ridden corp

The logical outcome of gene mapping is nigh. Biotechnology companies are using genetic information to design new drugs that may go beyond merely slowing or stopping a disease process to inducing the regeneration or repair of damaged tissue. Looking past the conventional drug targets of enzymes and gene-coupled receptors, researchers are seeking out molecules in the pathways along which biochemical signals are transferred. In some cases, their work has led to compounds--now in clinical trials or

Seven life scientists are among the 15 honorees for this year's National Academy of Sciences award ceremony set for today at the NAS's 135th annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The meeting also includes the induction of academy members elected last year (E.R. Silverman, The Scientist, 11[9]:1, April 28, 1997). The academy is presenting its highest honor, the Public Welfare Medal, to David A. Hamburg, president emeritus of the Carnegie Corp. of New York. Hamburg, 72, is being recognized "for his

Zygmunt F. Dembek's concern and alarm (Letters, The Scientist, Jan. 5, 1998, page 10) at the lack of dissection in biology courses might turn to shock when he learns that this same attitude and policy has already invaded veterinary schools. I recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin Veterinary School, and although we had dissection classes using large and small animals, the small animal surgery department made a policy decision that it was unethical to teach surgery to veterinary stu

Your article on the Office of Alternative Medicine (P. Smaglik, The Scientist, Nov. 10, 1997, page 7) quotes Robert Park as saying that it is difficult to set up a double-blind study of acupuncture. Actually, it is rather easy--it was done in the department of orthopedic surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, when I was a faculty member there. One of the residents was Asian, and his mother was an acupuncturist. For his research project he undertook to determine the efficacy of

V.V. Ogryzko, R.L. Schiltz, V. Russanova, B.H. Howard, Y. Nakatani, "The transcriptional coactivators p300 and CBP are histone acetyltransferases," Cell , 87:953-9, 1996. (Cited in more than 143 publications to date) Comments by Vasily V. Ogryzko, Laboratory of Molecular Growth Regulation, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development NEW TOOLS: NICHD investigators Vasily Ogryzko and Yoshihiro Nakatani used acetylation to begin to gain some insight into how chromatin is activate

DUAL ROLE: Ronald DePinho, a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, helped to both identify INK4a as a tumor suppressor and to demonstrate its involvement in the Rb and p53 pathways. M. Serrano, H. Lee, L. Chin, C. Cordon-Cardo, D. Beach, R.A. DePinho, "Role of the INK4a locus in tumor suppression and cell mortality," Cell, 85:27-37, 1996. (Cited in more than 134 publications to date) Comments by Ronald A. DePinho, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Albert Einstein C

"Aarrrggghhhh!" My cry of frustration echoed down the hall. My latest attempt to subclone five important PCR products had failed yet again. After two months of fruitless effort, I was at my wit's end until a colleague suggested I try the TOPO TA Cloning® Kit from Invitrogen. "Look," he said, "all you need to do is to combine 1 microliter of your PCR reaction and 1 microliter of the pCR2.1-TOPO® vector, add 3 microliters of water, and wait 5 minutes. Then transform your competent cells

You might think there couldn't be anything new in size exclusion chromatography. Think again. Princeton Separations' CentriSpin columns are the latest addition to a variety of commercially available micro- and mini-spin columns. Three CentriSpin columns-- CentriSpin-10, CentriSpin-20, and CentriSpin-40, each with a different exclusion point--allow for a variety of applications. Princeton Separations' CentriSpin Columns These new columns contain a crosslinked dextran-polymer gel-filtration ma