March 2008

As a young assistant professor at the University of Washington in the late 1980s, Randall Moon stole into his quiet lab during a holiday break to run one experiment. He had a hunch that the INT-1 gene played a crucial role in development. It turned out he was right: In that one experiment he discovered a critical signaling pathway and the direction of his career for the next 15 years, which he writes a

Having failed the developing world, are we now getting it right?

Skinny fat, really? In "The skinny fat ," 1 Bruce Spiegelman tells us he is working with the Broad Institute to screen every FDA-approved drug for possible effects on a "brown-fat molecule," PRDM16, reasoning that drugs that act on this molecule might also trigger weight loss. Wouldn't it be smart to determine whether any of these FDA-approved drugs are associated with signifi

var FO = { movie:"http://www.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/54403/54403.swf", width:"520", height:"680", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"false"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Lab transformation: A slideshow For the March issue, Kerry Grens visited a first-of-its-kind core facility for insect genetics at the University of Maryland's Biotechnology Institute (UMBI). View this slideshow for a closer look at the images produced by the new lab

WNTer wonderlandA developmental signal involved in tissue regeneration could be a target for cancer and Alzheimer therapies. By Randall MoonRelated Articles 1 and the experiments were quickly repeated by many people in the field, either out of a sense of disbelief or just because they were so easy and exciting to do. Today INT-1 is called WNT-1. Researchers realized that INT-1 and the Wingless gene in fruit flies were the same, so they combined the

WNT PathwayRelated Articles WNTer wonderland

var FO = { movie:"http://www.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/54385/54385.swf", width:"520", height:"680", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"false"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Slideshow: Implementing change in Haiti A slideshow showing images of the fight against HIV/AIDS in Haiti By Bob Grant In the troubled heart of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a clinic has been administering treatment, care, and counseling to the country's HIV/AIDS patients sin

var FO = { movie:"http://www.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/54384/vid1.swf", width:"400", height:"550", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"false"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Video: First-responders to HIV in Haiti reminisceIn our March issue, staff writer Bob Grant traveled to Haiti to see the science behind a successful public health program in a developing country. He spent time at a clinic in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince and met research

Implementing ChangeIllustrations by Katrina StanleyCan better science save global health initiatives? By Bob Grant1 It turns out that villagers living near the wells were drinking from them, but they were also using non-well water in sufficient quantities to keep the cholera rate high. Because monitoring and evaluation were not incorporated into the design of the program, says Glass, the intervention seemed to be missing its mark. Though he was not in

Successful StrategiesPublic health programs have scored a handful of victories in developing nations. By Bob GrantImplementing Change Video: First-responders to HIV in Haiti reminisce Slideshow: Implementing change in Haiti Science Applied to the Greatest NeedsThough it's tough to pinpoint specific causes of success or failure in widespread interventions, all of these programs incorporated some degree of outcome evaluation, or implementation science. That doesn'

var FO = { movie:"http://www.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/54376/54376.swf", width:"520", height:"680", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Slideshow: This year's BPTW Postdocs in pictures In our March issue, review the institutions that ranked at the top of our 6th annual Best Places to Work for Postdoc survey. Click here to view interactive sortable charts of the top ranked institutions in 2008. Click here to v

var FO = { movie:"http://www.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/54375/map.swf", width:"750", height:"440", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Top 15 US Institutions MapIn our March issue, review the institutions that ranked at the top of our 6th annual Best Places to Work for Postdoc survey. Here, take an interactive tour of this year?s results, find out which institutions came out on top and see how institutions compare in size, sala

Assessing the Postdoc ExperienceIn our March issue, review the institutions that ranked at the top of our 6th annual Best Places to Work for Postdoc survey. Here, view the interactive sortable charts of the top ranked institutions in 2008. Click here to view the printable PDF.Article Extras Best Places to Work Postdoc 2008 Always evolving at the Hutch Gladstone: Attentive at the top Cambridge shoots ahead Slideshow: Top 2008 Institutions Survey Methodology Ranking Ta

Best Places to Work 2008: Postdocs Top Institutions PDFARTICLE EXTRAS Always evolving at the HutchGladstone: Attentive at the topSlideshow: Top 2008 InstitutionsSurvey MethodologyRanking Tables:Top 35 US InstitutionsTop 15 US InstitutionsTop 10 International InstitutionsBPTW: Survey Finding PDFsDemographics:Interactive map of resultsAssessing the Postdoc Experience In our March issue, read about the

Best Places to Work 2008: PostdocsIn a tight funding environment, institutions must find creative ways to improve postdoc benefits and foster a thriving scientific atmosphere. By Jonathan ScheffArticle Extras Always evolving at the Hutch Gladstone: Attentive at the top Cambridge shoots ahead Slideshow: Top 2008 Institutions Survey Methodology Ranking Tables Top 35 US Institutions Top 15 US Institutions Top 10 International Institutions BPTW: Survey

Credit: Courtesy of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center" /> Credit: Courtesy of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Things have changed a lot at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle since staff scientist Karen Peterson joined as a postdoc in 1995. Most notably, her current position as advisor to the Student-Postdoc Advisory Committee (SPAC), a group that focuses on career development, didn't even

Survey MethodologyARTICLE EXTRAS Always evolving at the HutchGladstone: Attentive at the topSlideshow: Top 2008 InstitutionsRanking Tables:Top 35 US InstitutionsTop 15 US InstitutionsTop 10 International InstitutionsBPTW: Survey Finding PDFsDemographics:Interactive map of resultsAssessing the Postdoc ExperienceSURVEY FORM A web-based survey form was posted from October 1 to December 3, 2007. Results were

The Scientist posted a Web-based questionnaire and invited readers of The Scientist and registrants on The Scientist web site who identified themselves as non-tenured life scientists working in academia or other non-commercial research organizations to respond. We received 3,086 usable responses. We asked respondents to assess their working conditions and environments by indicating their level of agreement with 44 criteria in 11 different areas. They also

Credit: ® Chris Goodfellow" /> Credit: ® Chris Goodfellow The secret of the J. David Gladstone Institutes' success — the San Francisco institute rated No.1 in our 2008 survey, No. 2 in 2007, and No. 1 in 2006 — is an attentive postdoctoral advisor, says Matt Hirschey, a postdoc at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology. "This was the only place I came across that sort of position," says Hirschey of postdoc advisor John LeViathan

Credit: © Phil Mynott" /> Credit: © Phil Mynott The University of Cambridge climbed to first place this year among international institutions, up from 9th last year and 25th in 2006. One reason for the jump, says Oliver Jones, a postdoc in biochemistry and leader of the university's postdoc society, is the university's new focus on professional training. "If you want to learn some new skill there's usually some way of doing it." Rel

High school dropout Peter Kwong has solved the structures of some of nature's toughest proteins.

User: Catherine Fenselau, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park Related Articles Peak Addition Tips for Quantifying Mass Spec Clean targeting Multiplex counts Label-free Metabolic power Project: Identifying molecular mechanisms of drug resistance in breast cancer Problem: Fenselau works with several drug-resistant and drug-sensitive cell lines, and she wanted a cheap and simple

User: Anthony Whetton, professor of cancer cell biology, University of Manchester, UK Project: Measuring proteomic changes induced by a panel of oncogenic tyrosine kinases in cultured cells Related Articles Peak Addition Tips for Quantifying Mass Spec Easy numbers Clean targeting Label-free Metabolic power Problem: Quantifying samples serially takes a long time and adds variability to the data, so Whetton wanted to measure

User: John Yates III, professor of chemical physiology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif. Project: Identifying insulin-signaling targets in Caenorhabditis elegans Related Articles Peak Addition Tips for Quantifying Mass Spec Easy numbers Multiplex counts Label-free Metabolic power Problem: Yates needed a rapid and accurate way to measure the change in abundance of three specific targets over time and growth temper

User: Ruedi Aebersold, professor for molecular systems biology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich Project: Breast cancer biomarker discovery in human serum Related Articles Peak Addition Tips for Quantifying Mass Spec Easy numbers Clean targeting Multiplex counts Metabolic power Problem: Aebersold needed a technique that could look for differentially expressed proteins in hundreds of clinical samples.

Use spike-in controls for absolute quantitation. For most biological applications, relative quantitation should suffice. Sometimes, though, absolute numbers matter. The solution: spike-in controls. Add a known quantity of an isotopically labeled form of the desired peptide (or close surrogate), and use its abundance to correlate peak height with molecular abundance. This peptide will behave identically with the peptides in your samples during sample

User: Matthias Mann, professor, Department of Proteomics and Signal Transduction, Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany Project:Measuring proteome changes in cultured Drosophila cells from RNAi-induced knockdown of specific gene products Related Articles Peak Addition Easy numbers Clean targeting Multiplex counts Label-free Problem: Mann wanted to cut down on side reactions that can plague chemical and

Two very different approaches to lab website design, and how they make it work.

Aedes aegypti mosquito larva with a PTEN homolog and DsRed marker inserted into its genome. Credit: courtesy of Robert Harrell" />Aedes aegypti mosquito larva with a PTEN homolog and DsRed marker inserted into its genome. Credit: courtesy of Robert Harrell Dave O'Brochta places his fingers on a net that covers the top of a bucket containing hundreds of Anopheles stephensi, a mosquito responsible for transmitting malaria. The mosquitoes slowly g

Judy and George Reimer, who met as healthy volunteers and married Credit: Photo by Bill Branson, NIH Medical Arts. Photo courtesy of the NIH Clinical Center" />Judy and George Reimer, who met as healthy volunteers and married Credit: Photo by Bill Branson, NIH Medical Arts. Photo courtesy of the NIH Clinical Center In 1958, Jim Conrad, a Mennonite from Oregon, volunteered to eat the same solid foods every day for several weeks, then nothing but corn oil and skim mil

What if preventing millions of deaths in children every year were as simple as a little transgenic technology and a favorite food that's a dime a dozen, proverbially speaking? To Peter Lachmann, at the University of Cambridge in England, it might be just that straightforward. Related Articles Science Applied to the Greatest Needs Implementing Change Lab Transformation Lachmann is convinced that antibody-enriched egg whites may be the key

David Liu's group supercharged green fluorescent protein (left) with a super positive (middle) and super negative (right) charge. Credit: David Liu / Reprinted with permission from American Chemical Society,J Am Chem Soc, 129:10110–2, 2007." />David Liu's group supercharged green fluorescent protein (left) with a super positive (middle) and super negative (right) charge. Credit: David Liu / Reprinted with permission from American Chemical Society,J Am Chem Soc, 129:

Philip Larkin examines the last of his transgenic poppies growing in a greenhouse at the Black Mountain Laboratory in Canberra, Australia. Credit: Courtesy of Brendan Borrell" />Philip Larkin examines the last of his transgenic poppies growing in a greenhouse at the Black Mountain Laboratory in Canberra, Australia. Credit: Courtesy of Brendan Borrell Out of a dozen transgenic plants in Philip Larkin's greenhouse at Black Mountain Laboratory in Canberra, only two sho

Credit: Top: Sarah Pierce and David Kimelman Right: courtesy of Robert Harrell" /> Credit: Top: Sarah Pierce and David Kimelman Right: courtesy of Robert Harrell WNT WORKSHOP >> Randall Moon describes how his discovery of a developmental signal which plays a role in tissue regeneration could be a target for cancer and Alzheimer therapies. On March 25, hear him speak about the subject in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, at the Keystone conference on Signaling P

Bioscience innovation is in crisis. What can we do about it?

New ideas are cheap; what we really need are scientists who can see them through.

The first chemical method of measuring levels of catecholamine

Credit: Dustin Fenstermacher / Wonderful Machine" /> Credit: Dustin Fenstermacher / Wonderful Machine Zemer Gitai likes to say of his thus far short, but fruitful, science career that he is devolving. Since he studied cancer in mice as an undergraduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he has been transitioning his work to increasingly simpler biologic systems. For now, he has settled on bacteria. As a PhD student at the University of California, San Fra

How to get numbers from mass spectrometry

Millennium Pharmaceuticals' Joe Bolen has kept scientists' morale high through wrenching changes.

How to create a great laboratory Web site.

Whole brain slices from the Yakovlev-Haleem collection. Credit: Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine, AFIP, Photo: ® Jason varney | Varneyphoto.com" />Whole brain slices from the Yakovlev-Haleem collection. Credit: Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine, AFIP, Photo: ® Jason varney | Varneyphoto.com