June 2003

A rowdy crowd of white-coated scientists, many recruited from the ranks of readers of The Scientist, upheld the community's braniac reputation by coming out on top in a televised national IQ test. "Test the Nation," a Fox television special, aired on June 9 in the United States. The show pitted scientists against groups of teachers, celebrities, students, hard-hatted construction workers, muscle-shirt-wearing body builders, and blonde women. The scientist group scored highest with an average

Frontlines | Golden Oldies-Piscine Style Erica P. Johnson It's not Mozart or Elvis that does so, but a cacophony of noises, resembling those that emanate from a reef, that makes the embryo of a clown fish heart's throb for a home. After birth, the ant-sized juveniles swim away, but eventually they return to a reef to live. In trying to determine how these flashy reef fish do so, marine biologist Stephen Simpson, University of York, investigated sound as a possible cue. He and colleague Ho

The Rising 'Tides The human genome sequence may be finished, but major centers continue to pump out those A's, T's, G's, and C's. | Click for larger version (55K) function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) r

Stored in the human genome, perhaps, is the record of human evolution and existence on this planet. Many say, however, that this history and the benefits it may unfold for human health cannot be found in the single, essentially complete human sequence--99.9% similar to any other human sequence. It's the 0.1% difference that should tell the tale--not only of migration, war, technological achievement, and conquest--but also of the differences that confer susceptibility to complex, multigenic dis

Courtesy of New Scotland Yard Press Bureau  MOUNTING EVIDENCE: Candles (top) found in the Thames River shortly after 'Adam's' body was discovered lend credence to the theory that the boy's death was part of a ritual killing. The candles were wrapped in a sheet (middle). A graphic depiction of the boy's torso, (bottom) along with a pair of shorts found with the body, demonstrates where he was dismembered. In a remarkable show of scientific sleuthing, London detectives combined mitochondri

Twice yearly, World Health Organization health officials meet to strategize against influenza, a malady that kills at least 250,000 people each year. In a chess match of sorts, they work to predict their opponent's next move, in this case by modifying vaccines to compensate for changes in the critical viral antigen hemagglutinin, which triggers the host's long-term immune memory. It takes several months to manufacture and distribute flu vaccines in sufficient quantities to inoculate vulnerabl

Reprinted with permission from Nature LEPROSY REDUCED: Circular genome map showing the position and orientation of known genes, pseudogenes and repetitive sequences. The scale in Mb is indicated by the numbers on the outside ring. Leprosy remains an epidemiological mystery, even 130 years after the leprosy bacillus was discovered.1 Despite the many helpful antibiotics now available to treat this mutilating disease, leprosy's transmission and mechanism of cell and tissue destruction remain

Courtesy of Anders Krogh  The Transmembrane Hidden Markov Model prediction of the topology of one photosynthetic reaction center chain. The five red bars are the predicted membrane helices and the histogram below represents the certainty with which they can be predicted. Membrane proteins do not reveal their structures easily. Because they are particularly hard to crystallize, such proteins make X-ray crystallography expensive and time-consuming. So, many investigators turn to theoretica

Courtesy of Solexa Total Genotyping Without a doubt, the quarter-century-old Sanger sequencing method performed like a champ during the Human Genome Project. But with the capacity to read only a few hundred bases per reaction, it is far too slow and expensive for routine use in clinical settings. Reaping the rewards of the genomics era will clearly require faster and cheaper alternatives. Some companies estimate that within the next five years, technical advances could drop the cost of seque

Four Common Methods of Detecting Protein PhosphorylationClick for larger version (44K) Signal transduction pathways comprise the cell's communications system; they transmit cues--from hormones, growth factors, or cytokines, for instance--that tell the cell to proliferate, differentiate, activate (or deactivate) a gene, or even die. As with any critical communications network, problems can arise when the lines go down or the signals get crossed, and studies have linked perturbations in signal