July 2005

Who would have thought that a ragtag group of entertainers could have an impact on the biggest social and political questions of the day?

's first assignment as a field applications specialist for Coulter in 1983 was to walk company founder Wallace H. Coulter through a FASEB meeting, translating some of the biology to the renowned electrical engineer who discovered the Coulter principle.

Re: "Turning back the tuberculosis tide."1 My group has published a number of studies and reviews that provide evidence that phenothiazines have activity against all strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis regardless of their antibiotic susceptibitility status.23 We have shown over the past 15 years that although phenothiazines have in vitro activity against tuberculosis (TB), the concentrations needed are in the order of 20 ug/ml and the maximum concentration that can be achieved in a human is le

Re: "Biology by the Numbers."1 Software licensing is a major factor as to why we do not use MatLab much, or why we do not use some packages, like SAS, at all. We are a 501c(3) non-profit, basic research institute with our own funding, yet many companies like MatLab or SAS will not give us "academic pricing:" because we are not a degree granting institution. Software vendors often refuse to let us share single licenses, and they don't seem to understand they are limiting the availability of their

I am saddened to see the level of oversight of these dangerous experiments at federal institutions.

The Web has changed the way in which many researchers access scientific information, conduct research, communicate their findings, and share data.

had a consignment destined for overseas returned by the US Postal Service (USPS).

, you might have been momentarily forgiven for thinking you were reading a celebrity magazine.

In 1980, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich took up economist Julian Simon on a bet that the market price of five metals would drop over the next decade.

Innate immunity, the first line of defense against infection, has revealed surprising complexity for what is considered a relatively primitive and conserved function.

Faith in the promise of pharmacogenomics has changed the plan for primary healthcare.

Though we think of them as blood cells, lymphocytes spend much of their time in distinct locations in the body.

Researchers often use immunoprecipitation (IP) to isolate specific proteins from complex samples or to identify protein-protein interactions.

Mosaic animals, which contain somatic cells with different genotypes, allow researchers to track how mutation or deletion of target genes affects cell development.

A meeting this past May ushered in the birth, or perhaps rebirth, of a field of study in which the controversy starts at the very name.

Healthy immune systems are supposed to ignore self-molecules when looking for foreign invaders.

The ocean floor is a dark place for a photosynthetic bacterium.

These papers were selected from multiple disciplines from the Faculty of 1000, a Web-based literature awareness tool http://www.facultyof1000.com.H. Aldaz et al., "Insights into microtubule nucleation from the crystal structure of human β-tubulin," Nature, 435:523–7, May 26, 2005.The authors have determined the crystal structure of γ-tubulin bound to GTP-γ S (a non-hydrolyzable GTP analog) at 2.7 Å resolution. γ-tubulin forms part of the γ-tubulin ring complex

Lab freezers are like mom's attic: cluttered with the property of people long gone.

It is a lament heard in labs everywhere, usually on Friday nights: "I can't go out, I've got to run a gel."

The power and promise of microarrays are vast.

James C. Foster, CEO of Charles River Laboratories, celebrated the company's five years of public trading by ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange on June 13.

Thomas P. Mathers realized in late 2003 that it was time to pump up Peptimmune's pipeline.

This spring Korea's Seoul National University announced plans to open a human embryonic stem cell bank.

Jamie Heywood, chief executive of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Therapy Development Foundation (ALSTDF), founded the nonprofit biotech company in 1999 after his brother was diagnosed with ALS.

European Union leaders failed to reach an agreement over the EU budget in late June, but Janez Potocnik, European Commissioner for Research, says it doesn't have to be a setback for research in the region.

Papers arising from work funded by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) should be deposited in an open-access repository "at the earliest opportunity, wherever possible at or around the time of publication, in accordance with copyright and licensing arrangements," according to a draft policy that RCUK made public in July.

The scientists were already massing when I arrived at Bronx River Forest on a steamy June morning.