February 2001

Stewart Bros. Photographers, Inc. Future site of the HHMI's collaborative research campus. New laboratories will be located in the lower left; the institute will occupy portions of the three office buildings pictured to the right. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the nation's largest privately held funder of biomedical research, has announced plans to build a major new high-tech laboratory facility. The 10-year, $500 million plan includes a biomedical science center for technology developme

Courtesy Santa Fe InstituteThe Santa Fe Institute, situated in the hills above Santa Fe, N.M. Even its interior design serves the unusual purpose of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI). At the top of a winding drive on the outskirts of the New Mexico capital that calls itself "the city different," SFI occupies a 1950s hacienda defined by three descending "pods." First is reception and administration. Second is a community area, full of comfortable furniture, with big views of the city and mountains. C

A good gene pool, like love, is where you find it. Now genomics researchers have two new ones to swoon over: one from Estonia, a crossroads of Scandinavian cultures and the northernmost of the former Soviet Union's Baltic republics; and from Tonga, an island kingdom half a world away where a Polynesian people has lived in near-perfect isolation for close to 3,500 years. Tonga and Estonia laid final plans last November and December, respectively, for national gene pool exploration programs aimed

Photos © Michael Davidson and The Florida State University These photos show the 60-carbon alkene buckminsterfullerene ("buckyballs"). This substance joins graphite and diamond as a third form of carbon molecule. Technology sometimes derives from clever combinations of tools. Merging immune system cells with cancer cells led to the hybridoma technology that produces monoclonal antibodies. A recipe of restriction enzymes, plasmids, and DNA underlies recombinant DNA and transgenic technologi

Cell Engineering at Hopkins Already a hub for stem cell research, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has announced plans for a new center to focus on selecting and modifying human cells. Called the Institute for Cell Engineering (ICE), the 40,000 square foot building will be funded through a $58.5 million private, anonymously made donation. Hopkins faculty announced the new project at a January 30 press conference. "What we're interested in really is reprogramming cells and puttin

On February 12, amid considerable international fanfare, Rockville, Md.-based Celera Genomics and the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium jointly announced the publishing of long-awaited papers detailing the human genome.1,2. Although the two groups jointly announced the sequencing of about 90 percent of the human genome at a White House press conference last June, drawn-out negotiations delayed the publishing of initial genome data until now. "It would be fair to say that Palestini

One As Mary Woolley stated,1 it is long overdue for scientists to talk to and communicate with nonscientists. I agree that science will greatly benefit from letting the general public know more about what scientists do. I also agree that we cannot rely entirely on science writers and journalists to interpret science to the general public. Scientists themselves have to do so. I especially like the response to the inquiry to scientists, "What do you do?" I agree that a confident "I work for you

I am writing to you to make you aware of an extremely positive outcome resulting from your journal's 1999 story on researching heavy metal contamination in arctic whales, by A.J.S. Rayl.1 The content of the story led to inquiries from other scientists around the country interested in global oceanic toxicology. John Wise of Yale University and others contacted me, and as a result, a network of researchers is beginning to form to address, in a global manner, the seriousness of our situation. �

As genetic mapping of species proceeds at a near explosive pace, new tools are being offered to manage this genetic data. Redasoft Software of Toronto recently released Visual Cloning 2000 (VC2000), a Windows-based program for genetic map creation and DNA sequence analysis. The program provides what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) graphics and tight integration with Internet databases. Redasoft's earlier program, Plasmid, was the first genetic mapping program with close integration to t

The patterns of gene expression can help determine what makes a neuron different in form and function from a lymphocyte and how each responds to external stimuli. Ascertaining these patterns during development or in the course of disease is now more common and has a higher level of importance than ever before. Conventional techniques for determining changes in gene expression include Northern blots, serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE), and cDNA microarrays. RAGE, (rapid analysis of

Available Competent Cell Lines Invitrogen's One Shot Kit Researchers looking for the ideal competent cell are faced with an interesting dilemma. While there is a vast market of special-function hosts that exhibit a variety and combination of mutations,1 scientists must choose carefully to take full advantage of the options and maintain the increased control that these hosts can provide. In such a market, the genotype says it all. These days, even most of the basic cloning strains are improved

Forty-six years ago, Edwin Krebs and colleagues changed the way researchers understood the regulation of protein activity. In a landmark paper, these authors described the regulation of glycogen phosphorylase by attachment of a phosphate group.1 Four years later, these same authors discovered that this phosphorylation event was mediated by the enzyme glycogen phosphorylase kinase (kinases are enzymes that catalyze the transfer of a phosphate group from ATP to a substrate protein).2 And nine year