February 2006

Laila Partida-Martinez and Christian Hertweck of the Leibniz Institute for Natural Products Research and Infection Biology, Jena, Germany, demonstrated that rhizoxin, a plant-rotting toxin believed to come from pathogenic fungi in the genus Rhizopus is in fact synthesized by an endosymbiotic bacterium.1 They posit that the relationship confers a metabolic benefit to both to bacteria and its fungal host, giving each access to nutrients released by decaying plant material after infection.

The endocytosis pathway involves multiple protein-protein interactions and has proven difficult to investigate. Two years ago David Drubin and colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley began to unravel the details of early endocytosis in yeast using live-cell imaging of six proteins involved in the pathway. The researchers recently extended the approach to examine 61 yeast-deletion mutants and determined the function of clathrin in yeast endocytosis. They also elucidated the a

Credit: © 2003 AAAS" /> Credit: © 2003 AAAS Researchers including H. Ronald Kaback of the University of California, Los Angeles, had been attempting for more than a decade to crystallize LacY, the lactose permease of Escherichia coli. ?After hitting my head against the wall with the wild type, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to try the mutant,? Kaback writes in an E-mail. In the early 1980s Kaback had stumbled upon a thermostable, nonaggregatin

Credit: Courtesy of Imperial College London" /> Credit: Courtesy of Imperial College London The photosynthetic enzyme Photosystem II (PSII) generates all of Earth?s atmospheric oxygen through a thermodynamically unfavorable reaction, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using solar energy. ?It?s been the Holy Grail of photosynthesis research ? to obtain structural information about the catalytic center where this very remarkable reaction occurs,? says biochemist James Barber o

Credit: © 2003 Nature Publishing Group" /> Credit: © 2003 Nature Publishing Group Sentinel lymph node biopsy, in which lymph nodes that receive direct drainage from a primary tumor site are excised to determine the extent of metastasis, is routinely used to accurately stage melanomas and breast cancers. The technique is time-consuming, difficult to learn, and involves the injection of a potentially hazardous radioactive tracer and a blue detection dye with temporary side effects.

B.P. Tu et al., ?Logic of the yeast metabolic cycle: temporal compartmentalization of cellular processes,? Science, 310:1152?8, Nov. 18, 2005.Cells grown in continuous and nutrient-limited conditions exhibit periodic metabolic cycles accompanied by a synchronized expression of most of their genes in three consecutive waves. This temporal compartmentalization might optimize key metabolic and cell-cycle processes and could be the origin of circadian and ultradian oscillators.Jürg

Currently a Visiting Scholar at MIT, Victor McElheny has been writing and editing for publications including Science, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe for more than 50 years. On page 42 he takes a look, five years later, at the human genome project, also the subject of his upcoming third book. ?Many genomics predictions will take many years to fulfill,? McElheny says, ?yet the project has grown larger, more widespread, and more exciting than anyone predicted

Write: The Scientist, 400 Market Street, Suite 1250, Philadelphia, PA 19106 Email: letters@the-scientist.com Fax: (215)351-1143 Will cancer immunotherapy fail? Ira Mellman1 paints rosy prospects for cancer immunotherapy, if only the field receives more support. We?ve repeatedly heard such promises over the past 40 years. Yet despite continuing strong support, progress has been minimal and I expect it will be so in the future. To be effectiv

DARWIN TURNS 197» Charles Darwin's birthday is February 12. Shrewsbury, UK, his birthplace, will be celebrating the entire month, while universities around the world, including Duquesne University, a Catholic university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will be holding "Darwin Days" Duquesne reminds those who ask why a Catholic university would hold a Darwin Day, that "the Catholic Church is not at odds with science, even evolutionary biology" See http://tinyurl.com/bww7y BOOK T

FEATUREIs Peer Review Broken? Submissions are up, reviewers are overtaxed, and authors are lodging complaint after complaint about the process at top-tier journals. What's wrong with peer review? BY ALISON MCCOOK Peter Lawrence, a developmental biologist who is also an editor at the journal Development and former editorial board member at Cell, has been publishing papers in academic journals for 40 years. His f

FEATUREIs Peer Review Broken?Truth or Myth? © GETTY IMAGESWe presented three common complaints about peer review at top-tier journals to editors at some of those journals. Here are their responses:ARTICLE EXTRASRelated Articles: Is Peer Review Broken?Submissions are up, reviewers are overtaxed, and authors are lodging complaint after complaint about the process at top-tier journal

FEATUREIs Peer Review Broken?What about Fast-track?Despite a high profile incident, preliminary evidence suggests the practice does not change peer-review quality or rejection ratesBY JOHN DUDLEY MILLER Many biomedical journals offer fast-track peer reviews of scientific articles. Woo-Suk Huang's now- discredited 2005 Science paper about human cloning was accepted 58 days after submission, faster than the

FEATUREWhither Gene Therapy? BY ALAIN FISCHER AND MARINA CAVAZZANA-CALVO A few successes notwithstanding, gene therapy remains highly experimental. Only a limited number of rare genetic diseases are candidates for gene therapy, and a few recipients have experienced severe adverse reactions from the treatment. Critics have argued that the technique has fallen short of its expectations.

FEATUREThe Human Genome Project +5 © CHRISTIAN DARKIN BY VICTOR K. McELHENY Five years after publication of two drafts of the human genome, Maynard Olson of the University of Washington finds himself longing for another "lurch." To be sure, genomic scientists across the world have chalked up many achievements since 2001, but, like many of his colleagues, Olson is feeling more impatient than celebratory.

FEATUREThe Human Genome Project +5Where Are We Now? Publication of the draft sequences of the human genome in 2001 was greeted with considerable hyperbole, being compared to the invention of the printing press, landing a man on the moon, the development of the atomic bomb, and more. We asked several researchers how, five years later, the genome has lived up to its billing, and what the next five years of th

FEATUREThe Human Genome Project +5Delivering on the Dream: Biomedical Research in the Genomic Era BY FRANCIS S. COLLINS Francis S. Collins is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of HealthWith the sequencing of the genomes of Homo sapiens and a wide array of other organisms, biology has emerged as a truly quantitative science. Researchers from all realms of biology - from botany to zool

FEATUREThe Human Genome Project +5Teaching a New Language © FRANK WOJCIECHOWSKIAdvances in genomics are beginning to force changes in education. An example is the new Princeton University undergraduate science curriculum, which David Botstein helps lead (pictured left). After working at MIT, Genentech, and Stanford University, he became director in 2003 of Princeton's Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrati

FEATUREBattling Bad Behavior COURTESY YURI MATROSOVICHAnti-alcohol propaganda such as this poster titled "Bartered" was distributed in the Soviet Union during the 1980s Many of society's most vexing problems - the rise of antibiotic resistance, the current epidemic of obesity, armed conflicts that leave both sides worse off - have their roots in the suboptimal and often puzzling actions of individuals. At times

FEATUREBattling Bad BehaviorBarriers to AdoptionHow can we improve the pace at which best practices are implemented? BY MICHAEL D. CABANA ARTICLE EXTRASRelated Articles: Battling Bad BehaviorHow do you convince people to do what's in their best interest? College Drinking: Norms vs. Perceptions Through medical history, improved practices are often accepted at a glacial pace. The British N

FEATUREBattling Bad BehaviorCollege Drinking: Norms vs. PerceptionsBY RICHARD RICE COURTESY RICHARD RICEPoster for a public health program aimed at reducing misperceptions about drinking at Virginia Commonwealth UniversityThough well meaning perhaps, shocking headlines in the media and related scare tactics may inadvertently serve to further inflate students' misperception that their peers are largely out of

US agencies change previously effective rules, give oversight to people unfamiliar with the benefits of animal research, and place unreasonable demands on researchers

Submitting to ?refinement, reduction, and replacement? risks the future of animal research

It?s time for a revolution in the ethics of research

A connection exists between disease outbreaks and extreme religious practice

So you want your own genome sequenced. What's that going to cost?

Here are five tips to getting the most out of your next gene-association study

Companies and regulators see codevelopment as the best medicine

FDA and industry prepare to revisit the costs and benefits of interaction during the drug approval process