March 2006

Should Sacramento, Albany, and Providence be taking over for Uncle Sam?

Infectious agents are threatening the world's crops

Soon after the surprising announcement that the human genome had far fewer genes than most had expected, researchers began to realize that there were still a great many unexplored transcriptional start sites. Tom Gingeras' team at Affymetrix, along with Kevin Struhl of Harvard University and colleagues, confirmed some of these findings in a 2004 Hot Paper by mapping the binding sites for three DNA transcription factors: Sp1, cMyc, and p53. Using a combination of high-density olig

Credit: ART WOLFE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY" /> Credit: ART WOLFE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Scientists have long suspected that global warming might cause extinctions. But until a group from the University of Leeds produced an influential model in 2004,1 "nobody had managed to frame the question," says Chris Thomas, the paper's lead author, now at the University of York. Thomas' group modeled relationships between distributions of 1,103 animal and plant species and their habitats across 20% of Eart

Credit: COURTESY OF PAUL KENYON" /> Credit: COURTESY OF PAUL KENYONMothering, good or bad, sticks with an individual according to a Hot Paper by McGill University researchers Michael Meaney, Ian Weaver, and Moshe Szyf. In 2004, the authors showed that in rat pups, high levels of licking, grooming, and arched-back nursing (LG-ABN) lowered the methylation state of the NGF1-A binding site of the glucocortoid exon 17 promoter, thereby increasing activation of the glucocortoid receptor gene

Small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) have never before been implicated in alternative splicing. Stefan Stamm and Shivendra Kishore, of the Friedrich-Alexander University Institute for Biochemistry, suggest that HBII-52, a non-coding RNA located on chromosome 15 regulates alternative splicing of the serotonin receptor 2C located on the X chromosome.1 The snoRNA locus is maternally imprinted, and loss of paternal expression results in Prader-Willi Syndrome, a congenital disease

In order for the anthrax toxin to enter a cell, its receptor-binding subunit must heptamerize, thus allowing the two enzymatic subunits to join prior to endocytosis. Laurence Abrami and colleagues at the University of Geneva and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recently revealed that endocytosis is regulated by counteracting posttranslational modifications in the receptor itself. Palmitoylation of the receptor's cytoplasmic tail facilitates endocytosis of the tox

K.K. Farh et al., "The Widespread Impact of Mammalian microRNAs on mRNA repression and evolution," Science, 310:1817-21, Dec. 16, 2005.Expression of mRNA carrying the conserved 7 nt sites matching microRNAs can be strong at developmental stages before microRNA expression but is reduced at a later stage. Genes preferentially expressed at the same time and place as microRNAs have evolved to avoid sites matching the miRNAs by adopting non-conserved sites.Fritz EcksteinMax Planck I

Prefab kits blunt technical creativity. Have your students devise their own solutions.

If you answer 'yes' to these four questions, you probably do.

How to uncover a person's potential value when conducting a job interview

New programs can expand and broaden your skill set and improve you career prospects

Credit: Photo: © Sam Ogden" /> Credit: Photo: © Sam OgdenKnown not only for her ability as a researcher but also for her skill at explaining to both her colleagues and the public what she does, Susan Lindquist was recently awarded Sigma Xi's recognition for outstanding science and science communication, the 2006 William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement. The prize brings further recognition for Lindquist, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Whitehead In

While the question of bioethics has been receiving increased attention at business schools and within the scientific community, a new program at Harvard Law School seeks to match a study of ethics directly with the question of law. The recently opened Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics (www.law.harvard.edu/programs/petrie-flom) will promote research to address healthcare policy, biotech patent law, the bioethics of reproductive technologies, and other a