February 2000

Figure: Gaetano Montelione and Yuanpeng Huang of Rutgers UniversityX-ray crystal structure of human basic fibroblast growth factor. With a bit of luck and sometimes decades of dedication, scientists have in recent years revealed fascinating vistas of biological structures at the atomic level using X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. In 1997, Timothy Richmond, a professor of X-ray crystallography at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, complete

The masses of sequencing information that now confront genomic scientists raise a huge question: Exactly what do the products of these genes do? About 30 genomes have been completely sequenced, and up to 100 will be done by year's end, perhaps including a roughly finished sequence of humankind's 100,000 or more genes. Sequence data can identify gene products involved in disease, but the challenge facing researchers is far broader than that. Somehow, they must characterize the biochemical functio

The University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Human Gene Therapy (IHGT) and its director, James M. Wilson, faced increasing pressure from the federal government in late January. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration suspended all eight of the institute's gene therapy clinical trials on Jan. 21. A few days before, the Office for Protection from Research Risks at the National Institutes of Health launched an investigation into whether a clinical trial violated federal regulations governing patien

University-based researchers have reason for optimism following President Bill Clinton's request in his fiscal year (FY) 2001 budget for a $2.8 billion increase in science funding. As negotiations begin in Congress on the long, bumpy track toward budget approval, the fastest starter out of the gate is the National Science Foundation, which would receive double the largest dollar increase in its half-century of existence. The National Institutes of Health likewise is in line for a substantial fun

The problems of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection require legions of researchers and an urgency that relies on teamwork, creative thinking, and previous studies. The Scientist went behind the scenes of two unrelated HIV papers that appeared in the January 2000 issue of Journal of Virology to find out what tweaked the researchers' imaginations and led to intriguing results. The papers lay at opposite ends of the HIV spectrum. One looked at T-cell responses in infected children; t

Most soldiers in the biotech revolution think the public will eventually accept genetically modified (GM) foods, thereby ending hostilities. However, science must first offer something of value, such as improved nutrition. Just making life easier for farmers with pest-resistant crops won't outweigh real or imagined risks to people or butterflies. That's the message of a new consumer poll done by Roper Starch Worldwide for the American Farm Bureau Federation.1 Metabolic or nutritional genomics--

Bioinformatics Tools With efforts mounting to characterize protein functions following genome sequencing, bioinformatics has emerged as a key technology. Three such developments were showcased at a recent genomics conference in San Diego: WHALES (Web Homology Alert Service)--This keeps National Institutes of Health intramural scientists aware of new releases in the databases for DNA and protein sequences. It's based on stored, user-defined profiles that are processed weekly, with results return

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Sometimes a little interruption is a good thing. For instance, during production of this issue of The Scientist, we thought we had the content completely planned and mostly prepared by Thursday, Jan. 20. Then President Bill Clinton made a speech in California on Friday, Jan. 21, and we gladly shuffled some pages around and arranged to include the news from his speech. It was too important to delay, much less ignore. As contributing editor Steve Bunk reports in "President's Budget Pushes Re

When I was a medical resident at Harvard Medical School's cancer center, I had an experience that was both unnerving and illuminating. In the wee hours of the morning, I was about to give a patient her scheduled dose of an experimental chemotherapeutic agent, but I had trouble getting the air bubbles out of the syringe. So there I was, muttering and tapping on the syringe, when the patient suddenly sighed deeply ... and died. Had all gone smoothly, I'd have given the drug 20 seconds earlier, she

Biologists are vigorously and enthusiastically exploring the structure and function of channels known as connexins, which link cells to one another. Connexin research is "hot," says one scientist heavily involved in the field, as investigators seek to answer a host of questions ranging from what passes through these channels to when and why they appear and disappear. Understanding how these channels work may also lead to improved drugs for diseases linked with connexin mutations. "From my perspe

Female fence lizard (Sceloporus undulatus) Conversations between neighbors in the biology department at the University of Akron have spawned a broader evolutionary view of leptin, the hormone that periodically makes headlines as a potential obesity cure-all. First described as an "adipostat" in mammals that signals the status of fat stores, leptin has since been implicated in feeding behavior, body temperature regulation, and onset of puberty.1,2 Its recent discovery in reptiles suggests a role

Multipurpose Hormone Scientists at Baylor College of Medicine have identified a new role for leptin: potent inhibitor of bone formation acting through the central nervous system (P. Ducy et al., "Leptin inhibits bone formation through a hypothalamic relay: a central control of bone mass," Cell, 100:197-207, Jan. 21, 2000). This is the first indication that the brain has a central role in controlling bone formation and density. The researchers worked with two groups of mice; one mutant strain was

Grow 'n' Glow GFP Two Hybrid System Many genetic and cellular processes rely on highly specific protein-protein interactions. Two-hybrid systems provide a way to systematically identify pairs of proteins (referred to as "bait" and "prey" proteins) that form stable contacts, and further, to identify which protein segments or domains are necessary to form the complex. MoBiTec's Grow 'n' Glow GFP Two-Hybrid System combines a relatively straightforward two-hybrid strategy with inducible expression,

MultiMark Multi-Colored Protein Standard Remember those old horror movies starring the evil, mad scientist, the obedient assistant, and the latest menacing, yet somehow misunderstood, laboratory creation? All that boiling and bubbling and zapping, experienced only in black and white. Much to our enjoyment, in recent years scientific laboratories have experienced an explosion of color. The necessary consumables--tubes, racks, pipette tips, and lab coats--are available in rainbow-colored assortmen

Ever gotten a great deal on a 1970s Charlie's Angels lunchbox on eBay and wondered why you couldn't do as well on an HPLC unit for your lab? With the September 1999 launch of BioBid.com, great deals on used lab equipment are now available at the click of a mouse. The dynamic nature of the biotech industry leads to a large number of surplus instruments and perfectly functional equipment collecting dust. It is not unusual for companies to start and abandon a project in a very short time. But wit

In the National Institutes of Health initial review group (IRG) on which I serve, we are now reviewing at each session a handful of proposals that seek to analyze the genetic basis of susceptibility to the infectious diseases that afflict great masses of the world's population. There is much excitement among my peers about these proposals, and by and large they have done reasonably well, in that they usually receive fundable priority scores. This trend in the Tropical Medicine and Parasitology