December 2005

we discuss the issues that have had an impact on infrastructure and business in the life sciences. As ever, science marches on.

was born in Tel Aviv and came to the United States in 1975.

I wonder why we are still asking questions like "How do you find genes for a disorder that eludes definition?"1 You even suggest the solution when you quote Steve Scherer saying that "while...neurolignin could be a candidate in some rare cases, other researchers have countered that the family where the gene was found may have mental retardation rather than autism." The answer is to look at candidate genes and find out what symptoms are phenotypically unique to people who have a particular varian

Re: Neural oscillations.1 Our work on synchronous oscillations involves analysis of ambiguous figures and the results indicating that multiple coherences were observed across a wide range of frequencies (not just gamma).2 This work raises the possibility that coherent oscillations are involved in memory retrieval (the realization of an alternative image in an ambiguous figure requires one to remember what the alternative image represents).

Re: Helping bacteria use magnets.1 Magnetotactic bacteria do not navigate by using the earth's magnetic field. They only move – pushed by their magnetosoms from the inside – in the direction of the lines of that field. This is not navigation. To navigate means to be able to move in any desired direction in relation to the direction of the earth's magnetic field.

Nanotechnology can learn much from history.

Amanda Goodall, a doctoral student in strategic management at Warwick Business School, UK, had a hunch, based on her experience working for college officials in both the United States and the United Kingdom: The world's elite research universities put a premium on naming elite researchers as their presidents.

If you didn't know better, you'd have been forgiven for being suspicious of the timing of the opening of the American Museum of Natural History's (AMNH) exhibit on Darwin in the middle of last month.

The bank note that Dominique Weil used to buy ice cream for her family at the beach this past summer may have traveled a long way.

One problem with the current war on cancer is that much of it focuses on destroying the malignant cell itself while paying little attention to some of cancer's allies that are more prone to attack.

More efficient protein structure determination is a major goal of the US structural genomics projects.

In October 2004, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hersko, and Irwin Rose "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation."

of high-affinity antibodies.

These papers were selected from multiple disciplines from the Faculty of 1000, a Web-based literature awareness tool http://www.facultyof1000.com.N. Touret et al., "Quantitative and dynamic assessment of the contribution of the ER to phagosome formation," Cell, 123:157–170, Oct. 7, 2005.Aligning an impressive array of methods, this study provides strong evidence against the recently proposed model of a significant contribution of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membranes during early phagosome

Proteins that stimulate and repress appetite appear to be cut from the same cloth.

Worms learn: If something makes you sick, don't eat it again.

The atomic-force microscope (AFM) was developed 20 years ago, but only recently has it become a significant tool for biologists.

If you thought transposons were mere genetic curiosities, think again.

data that's essential for mathematical modeling of biological pathways.

Adult nematode worms contain 959 somatic cells, and thanks to Nobel laureate John Sulston and colleagues, scientists know the lineage of every one of them.

are a hot topic these days.

Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), or location analysis, is an antibody-based method for identifying the segments of DNA recognized by a particular transcription factor in a native chromatin environment.

G-matrix Fourier transform (GFT) NMR, a technique developed several years ago for rapid collection of nuclear magnetic resonance data, has been used to determine the structures of eight proteins in less than a month.1 "People usually work for many months for one structure. And even a year is not unusual," says coauthor Thomas Szyperski of the University of Buffalo. [see related story, page 36]The work demonstrates for the first time that GFT NMR works on a "real world" scale, meaning a protein c

The US Senate recently dropped a proposed amendment from the Agriculture Appropriations Bill to restrict research institutions from purchasing laboratory animals from Class B dealers.

Australia's major government science body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), plans to cut up to 25% of its research support staff during the next three years to save about $30 million (Australian) per year.

Ethiopia plans to open its first Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute (ABRI) by next year.

The US Senate plans to offer new incentives to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries to develop more vaccines, drugs, and countermeasures against a range of pathogens.

Last month, the Italian Parliament approved a debated reform proposed by University and Research Minister Letizia Moratti that eliminates permanent contracts for all but professors and establishes a national exam for those who wish to qualify as a professor.

that implied levels of the carcinogen acrylamide in the body might not be as strongly influenced by consumption of acrylamide-containing food as is currently believed.

It's just past midnight and a Vienna rave is at full-throttle, packed with sweaty dancers pulsing to an electronic beat.