May 2007

Pain and PromiseAutoimmune diseases lack the sledgehammer impact, and therefore the instant recognition, of our other great medical afflictions such as cancer and heart disease. But as the vivid patient testimonies on pages 6-15 illustrate, they are worthy of notoriety. Insidious and nasty, difficult to diagnose, perplexing to treat, bewildering for patients to understand, and painful to live with, autoimmunity presents a series of daunting challenges. First, there's the sheer number of condi

The Diseases Autoimmunity is transformed from an esoteric scientific challenge by the daily reality of millions of patients. So we begin with a description of the impact of autoimmune disease on patients, their families, society and healthcare systems. The depth of the challenges that underlie autoimmune diseases come through in painfully clear ways in the series of patient profiles starting on the next page. As described by Stephen

The Art of Adapting to MS By Kirsten Weir © Matthew Robbins Maggie McPhersun stands in front of a canvas that she painted, a whimsical print of swirling lines and bright colors. Completing it, she says, was "incredibly painful emotionally." McPhersun, 51, is a registered nurse from Brunswick, Maine. She's also an artist, and she once took commissions, painting intricate portraits - before multiple scle

Living with Rheumatoid Arthritis By Meredith Small © F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd. Thirteen years ago, when Steve Robson was 35 years old, he casually tried out a jackhammer while working on a jobsite in Dublin, Ireland. The next morning, Robson's left hand wouldn't work. Everyone assumed that the jackhammer was to blame, and that his hand would soon be fine. It wasn't. In fact, it wasn't the jackhammer a

Fitting Lupus into Life By Juhi Yajnik © Leah Fasten Photography In Westborough, Mass., some people find it strange that 45-year-old Marianne Crowley gardens at night. Being misunderstood, though, is nothing new to her. For most of her twenties, Crowley had symptoms that felt like severe arthritis. The muscles in her arms and hands atrophied and felt as though they were being pricked with needl

More Than Skin Deep By Kirsten Weir Courtesy of Scott Steele Scott Steele, the 32-year-old managing director of the Classical Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon, still remembers a trip to a hair salon as a teenager. The hairdresser took one look at the psoriasis outbreak on his scalp and forehead and actually backed away. Even after Steele explained that it wasn't contagious, the woman refused to cu

Crash Course with Rheumatoid Arthritis By Juhi Yajnik © Courtesy of the Daily Press In 1987, Beverly Williams began a battle with rheumatoid arthritis. Williams was a 22-year-old newspaper reporter, fresh out of Virginia Tech, when her hands started to hurt. Her doctor sent her to a specialist who diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis. She took the news lightly. "But if I knew then, what I know now," she says

1 on the epidemiology of autoimmune diseases, perhaps the most detailed publication on the topic so far. That report shows that in the more common conditions, such as MS, the imbalance tilts so that affected patients are roughly two-thirds female. "In some diseases, however, the degree of disproportion is very extreme," Cooper says. For example, at least 85% of patients with thyroiditis, systemic sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, and Sjögren disease are female. In data from the Cent

On the Panda Trail In our May issue, contributor Jerry Guo traveled to the Wolong Nature Reserve in China's Sichuan Province to learn what researchers there are doing to increase the panda population. Here, see the pandas at play - and what they leave behind. var FO = { movie:"http://images.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/53136/panda.swf", width:"552", height:"600", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Please download the Adobe Flash

Assessing the Cost of Rheumatoid Arthritis ARTICLE EXTRAS The Trials of Keeping Track In England and Wales, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) affects approximately 400,000 people, or 0.5-1% of the population. Those figures come from the "Final Appraisal Determination: Adalimumab, Etanercept, and Infliximab for the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis," published in November last year, by the National Institute for Health and Clini

Slideshow: Stem cells for laughs Presenting last at the end of a five day conference can be a drag. Follow some slides from a talk at a recent Keystone meeting on reproduction to see how Tilo Kunath keeps the audience?s interest up. var FO = { movie:"http://images.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/53155/funnies.swf", width:"552", height:"600", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Please download the Adobe Flash Player to view this con

Families in Crisis Stanley M. Finger The impact of an autoimmune disease is felt by more than just the patient. One of the myths about autoimmune disease is that it has little socioeconomic impact. Nothing could be further from the truth. Autoimmune diseases as a whole afflict many people. In 2005, the National Institutes of Health estimated that as many as 24 million Americans have one or more a

Green Lab: Resources ARTICLE EXTRAS Interactive Q&A:   Need advice on making your lab green? Can Labs Go Green? Anatomy of a Green Lab Green lab slideshow List of resources If you are interested in finding out more about the resources needed to create a more environmentally friendly lab, the following list of websites should provide a good starting point. American Society of Heating, Refrigera

The Causes What causes autoimmune disease? Jeff Bluestone of the University of California, San Francisco - one of the world's leading authorities on the mechanisms behind autoimmunity - talks us through the pathways that trigger and fuel the internal battle to control the immune system. Thomas Dörner of the Charite University Hospital Berlin (see article here) and Yoshiyuki Ohsugi of Chugai Pharma

1 Consequently, immunologists adjusted their focus from trying to determine why autoreactive cells escape deletion to exploring how the immune system maintains a homeostatic balance and why it sometimes fails. It seems clear that understanding this balance - a peaceful coexistence of protective immunity without self-destructing - will reveal how the immune system really works and how autoimmunity is triggered. The challenge resides in the comple

A New Dynamic With an eye toward host-pathogen interactions, can a Penn State center predict and prevent the next pandemic? By Brendan Borrell ARTICLE EXTRAS 1 "Our vision really is to have a systems approach to disease," says Hudson. "Issues that go from intracellular interactions between viruses and cells right the way through to pandemics, something we call the protein-to-pandemic link." Pathogens don't just interact, they evol

Audio Slideshow: The Parasites of Beaver Pond Tom Raffel of Penn State's Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics takes writer Brendan Borrell on a trip to Beaver Pond where the parasites are jumping. var FO = { movie:"http://images.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/53152/cidd.swf", width:"550", height:"511", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Please download the Adobe Flash Player to view this content:

Evolving Epidemiology ARTICLE EXTRAS 1 Epidemic patterns are largely determined by the time course of an infection, whether it's measured in days, weeks, or years. Phylogenetic patterns result from an interaction between natural selection mediated by the immune system (and/or drug treatments) and random epidemiological processes. Here's how some common pandemics play out. Measles is a highly conta

1 For example, indicators of RA include the presence of rheumatoid factor (RF) and antibodies against citrullinated peptides (anti-CCP), which point toward a central role of activated B cells and plasma cells producing autoreactive immunoglobulin. In the last few years, basic and clinical research have shown that B cells can affect RA in many ways. In affected tissues of autoimmune patients, lymphoid follicles with germinal centers (GCs) - the so-called tertiary lymphoid structures - fr

1 Similarly, Estelle Bettelli of the center for neurological diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and her colleagues showed that TGF ß -transgenic mice had increased numbers of Th17 cells and more severe autoimmune diseases. 2 These results clearly demonstrated that TGF ß is essential for the induction of Th17 cells. But more important, papers recently published have shown that IL-6 promotes the development of Th17 cells and that anti-IL-6 antibody almost complete

Healthy Antagonism ARTICLE EXTRAS 1 Just a year ago, Peter Hudson, who helped develop the center, invited Poss to come to CIDD. "You want me to come for a seminar?" Poss asked. "No, no," she recalls him saying. "We want you to come." She's already having an impact. At a recent lab meeting, Hudson's postdoc, Sarah Perkins, was presenting an idea to test how an intestinal worm and a respiratory bacterium, Bordete

Watching the Brain Lie Can fMRI replace the polygraph? By Ishani Ganguli ARTICLE EXTRAS A History in Deception Anatomy of Lying Amanda lies flat on her back, clad in a steel blue hospital gown and an air of anticipation, as she is rolled headfirst into a beeping, 10-ton functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) unit. Once inside, the 20-something blonde uses a handheld device to respond to questions about the playing cards a

A History in Deception The polygraph has long been plagued by questions By Ishani Ganguli ARTICLE EXTRAS Watching the Brain Lie Anatomy of Lying The polygraph-developed in the 1920s by John Larson, a Berkeley, Calif., policeman with a PhD in physiology-relies on the notion that people get nervous when they lie. A subject is strapped to a chair by wires and cuffs on his arm, chest, and fingers, and the "lie detector" marks his v

Anatomy of Lying Is there a "deception center" in the brain?By Ishani Ganguli ARTICLE EXTRAS Watching the Brain Lie A History in Deception By some estimates, deception evolved in primates 12 million years ago; and as primate species' neocortices grew, so did the frequency of their lies. In humans, learning how to lie, and how to detect lies, is a natural part of childhood development, studies sho

Too Much to Untangle By Michael Szpir Genes and the environment both contribute to autoimmune diseases, and future advances could come from studying these factors in combination. ARTICLE EXTRAS Ultraviolet Light and Lupus Drugs, Diet, and Lupus Smoking and Rheumatoid Arthritis Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroid Disease Ultraviolet Light and Dermatomyositis Why anyone develops an autoimmune disease is

A selected list of oncolytic viruses in clinical trialsClick on the company or institution name for more information on the clinical trials Virus Selective targeting method Indications Human trial status Companies/Institutions (candidate) Adenovirus E1B deletion restricts replication to cells with abberant mRNA transport Head and neck tumors Phase III Sunway Biotech of China (H101) Head and neck tumors Phase III (canceled) Onyx (O15)

Ultraviolet Light and Lupus ARTICLE EXTRAS Too Much to Untangle Drugs, Diet, and Lupus Smoking and Rheumatoid Arthritis Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroid Disease Ultraviolet Light and Dermatomyositis Sunlight can worsen rashes and even trigger a flare-up of the disease in some people with lupus. It is well known that sun-sensitive lupus patients carry certain variants of the HLA genes, but those are

To Build a Killing Machine David Kirn can't turn his back on a century-old quest to pit oncolytic viruses against tumors. By Andrew Holtz ARTICLE EXTRAS 1 Reports like this prompted many investigators in the middle of the last century to apply viral infections to tumors, but the available viruses, either taken from the wild or adapted from contemporary vaccines, were blunt instruments. Advances in bioengineering have provided the means t

Drugs, Diet, and Lupus ARTICLE EXTRAS Too Much to Untangle Ultraviolet Light and Lupus Smoking and Rheumatoid Arthritis Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroid Disease Ultraviolet Light and Dermatomyositis One of the best examples of a gene-environment interaction in autoimmunity involves instances in which certain drugs produce a lupus-like syndrome in genetically susceptible individuals. It turns out

Smoking and Rheumatoid Arthritis ARTICLE EXTRAS Too Much to Untangle Ultraviolet Light and Lupus Drugs, Diet, and Lupus Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroid Disease Ultraviolet Light and Dermatomyositis Recently, Lars Klareskog at the Karolinska Institute and his colleagues described a strong gene-environment interaction in a subset of people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) (L. Klareskog et al., "Genes,

How a Killer Virus is Trained on Cancer

Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroid Diseases ARTICLE EXTRAS Too Much to Untangle Ultraviolet Light and Lupus Drugs, Diet, and Lupus Smoking and Rheumatoid Arthritis Ultraviolet Light and Dermatomyositis A number of clinical and epidemiological studies suggest that the incidence of autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITDs), such as Hashimoto thyroiditis and Graves disease, goes up as dietary iodine increas

Ultraviolet Light and Dermatomyositis ARTICLE EXTRAS Too Much to Untangle Ultraviolet Light and Lupus Drugs, Diet, and Lupus Smoking and Rheumatoid Arthritis Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroid Disease Dermatomyositis is a connective-tissue disease that is characterized by inflammation of the skin and the muscles. Exposure to sunlight, either occupationally or recreationally, is anecdotally associa

The Importance of Imaging ARTICLE EXTRAS To Build a Killing Machine A selected list of oncolytic viruses in clinical trials Moments after being injected with a tagged virus, the entire body of a mouse glows under specialized cameras designed to pick up light emanating from deep beneath the skin. Over time the light becomes concentrated to a few key spots. These are the tumors where the virus, a strain of vaccinia, is replicating

Naltrexone Molecule How pharmacogenomics might help addiction treatment 20 years ago, scientists got hooked on a single transcription factor that responds to a number of drugs of abuse. Will their work lead to treatments? By Kerry Grens ARTICLE EXTRAS 1 In 2003 David Oslin and Charles O'Brien at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Addiction Treatment and their colleagues reported an association between this SNP and how well

Innovative Treatments Autoimmune disease has been a therapeutic backwater. No longer. A collection of innovative therapies is now coming onstream. Anne Harding covers therapies targeted at T-cell mechanisms (Click here), and Pamela Gannon explores compounds aimed at B-cell and interleukin-6 pathways and receptors (Click here). Also included is a look back over the history of approaches to battling autoimmunity. Andrew M. Chan of Genentech

1 Nonetheless, treatment probably won't involve blocking any one pathway entirely. Instead, the best treatments will make slight modifications in several places. "The future is really novel pathways - to interact with novel pathways that offer the opportunity for different types of responses," says Brian Kotzin, vice president of medical sciences at Amgen in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Billions of Data Points Despite the potential undesirable con

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Best Places to Work in Industry 2007: Top 30 Companies Use the interactive chart below to sort the top ranked institutions by category. Resize the rows or scroll within the chart to view category. Click here to view the printable PDF. // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/53161/top30_07.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval ta

Best Places to Work in Industry 2007 Results PDF ARTICLE EXTRAS The Little Company That Can Sandoz stands out Top 30 Companies Top Large Companies Top Small Companies Most Important Factors Top Companies on the Most Important Factors Categories Best Places to Work: Survey Findings PDF

The Little Company That Can By Bob Grant Photo by Catherine Ledner ARTICLE EXTRAS Best Places to Work 2007 Sandoz stands out Top 30 Companies Top Large Companies Top Small Companies Most Important Factors Top Companies on the Most Important Factors Categories Best Places to Work: Survey Findings PDF Amylin Pharmaceuticals, a 20-year-old biopharmaceutical company based in San Diego, broke into ou

Sandoz stands out By Andrea Gawrylewski Courtesty of Sandoz ARTICLE EXTRAS The Little Company That Can Best Places to Work 2007 Top 30 Companies Top Large Companies Top Small Companies Most Important Factors Top Companies on the Most Important Factors Categories Best Places to Work: Survey Findings PDF Having never ranked in the history of our Best Places to Work in Industry survey, Sandoz debut

Best Places to Work in Industry 2007: Top Large Companies Use the interactive chart below to sort the top ranked institutions by category. Resize the rows or scroll within the chart to view category. Click here to view the printable PDF. // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/53161/topLarge.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval

Best Places to Work in Industry 2007: Top Small Companies Use the interactive chart below to sort the top ranked institutions by category. Resize the rows or scroll within the chart to view category. Click here to view the printable PDF. // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/53161/topSmall.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval

Top Autoimmune Diseases DISEASE AGE OF ONSET IMPACTED TISSUES SYMPTOMS MECHANISM CURRENT TREATMENT Addison's disease Children or young adults Adrenal glands Fatigue Low blood pressure Muscle weakness Sometimes darkening of the skin Weight loss Inadequate production of cortisol and, sometimes, aldosterone Hormone replacement for cortisol and, if needed, aldosterone Allergic asthma Teenage years Lungs Constricted ai

Best Places to Work in Industry 2007: Most Important Factors Use the interactive chart below to sort the top ranked institutions by category. Resize the rows or scroll within the chart to view category. Click here to view the printable PDF. // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/53161/mostImpFactors.csv"); // start asyncronous data re

Best Places to Work in Industry 2007: Top Companies on the Most Important Factors Categories Use the interactive chart below to sort the top ranked institutions by category. Resize the rows or scroll within the chart to view category. Click here to view the printable PDF. // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/53161/topCoFactors.csv");

Best Places to Work in Industry, 2007 Survey Methodology Related Articles Best Places to Work in Industry 2007 The Little Company That Can Sandoz stands out Top 30 Companies Top Large Companies Top Small Companies Most Important Factors Top Companies on the Most Important Factors Categories Best Places to Work: Survey Findings PDF Survey Methodology Survey Form: A web-based survey was posted on The Scientist web site from January February 8 to

Historical Highlights in Therapies Autoimmune diseases stretch far back into the history of humans. Related illnesses even exist in nonhuman primates, such as the baboon model of Chaga's disease. Treatments for human autoimmune diseases have also been around for ages, or at least centuries. In the late 1600s, physicians treated RA with Peruvian bark, which contains quinine. A century later, physician

Making Conservation Make Sense If it weren't for hurricanes, Les Kaufman might be studying something completely different today. By Karen Hopkin Jason Varney | VarneyPhoto.com Les Kaufman claims his interest in science might have begun in utero. "I remember at age 3, I got a book about the moon," he says. "At about 4, my father started bringing home herpetiles: frogs and turtles and things f

1 B-Cell Depletion Edwards and his colleagues began to explore the use of B-cell depletion therapy. "Our basic research on cellular interaction in RA indicated that it ought to work, so we tried it," says Edwards. His group used rituximab. The antibody binds to the CD20 receptor, which is expressed on the surface of B cells throughout most stages of B-cell maturation. The drug most likely causes destruction of the B cells by a combination of antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxi

Manipulating the Mechanisms By Mike May Andrew C. Chan, MD, PhD, vice president of research immunology and antibody engineering at Genetech, discusses the future of research on autoimmunity, and how it could lead to more precise treatments. In the pharmaceutical industry in general, what therapies look particularly promising? There is a plethora of different kinds of mechanisms that are being pursue

Moving from Prediction to Prevention By Noel R. Rose Preventing autoimmune diseases is still a long way off, but it's a goal worth pursuing. © Bill McAllen Photography For me, the dream began in the early 1960s. As a medical student, I was helping with the care of a 16-year-old girl who had classical Hashimoto thyroiditis, a disease that more commonly occurs among middle-aged women. I guessed that this

Organizations for Autoimmune DiseasesThis sampling of international associations, foundations, and societies focused on various autoimmune diseases reveals the group efforts that benefit patients and researchers. Although many other organizations exist, the ones listed here provide informative Web sites with frequent updates. American Autoimmune Related Diseases Associationwww.aarda.org AARDA pursues the eradication of autoimmune diseases, as well as the alleviation

Life Science Industry Awards 2007 Saluting the winners: Customization, value, and customer service is the name of the game. By Andrea Gawrylewski, Bob Grant, and Manasee Wagh Although biomedical companies in search of new drugs often seem to grab all the headlines, anyone working in bioscience research and drug development knows that none of their advances would be possible without the life science industry that creates the rea

Andrew Holtz, author of House, MD, spent 17 years at CNN, during 10 of which he covered medicine. He holds a masters degree in public health from Portland State University and writes a regular column for Oncology Times. On page 48, he reports on scientists who are trying to use viruses to treat cancer. ?The story is an interesting intersection of business and science,? say Holtz. ?Companies and academics are now trying to show that oncovirus can co

Journals should make confidential full manuscript files available.

What we really need is for people to be healthy and productive for a greater portion of their lifespan. Re-engineering humans Re: ?What if humans were designed to last??1 Except in those areas of the world where food shortages, war and disease are major threats, most people can now expect to live longer than their grandparents did. Those of us fortunate enough to be living in the wealthier parts of

Related Articles Slideshow: On the panda trail On a March afternoon, there are so many pandas in the ?kindergarten pen? at Wolong Nature Reserve in China?s Sichuan Province, it?s hard to keep track of their antics. One is attempting a handstand while three others are playing king of the hill. These carefree cubs ? a record 19 from Wolong?s 2006 breeding season ? are part of the dramatic comeback for a symbol of conservation: the giant panda. The toddlers may one day follow Xiangxi

LINNAEUS TERCENTENNIAL>> Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus would have turned 300 this month. Sweden is hosting a number of celebrations, including a Linnean garden at the Chelsea Garden Show, a Festival of Love, and bike rides through Swedish regions that inspired the Father of Taxonomy. Pick your favorite event at www.linnaeus2007.se/. TREE SPREE>> China is planting a 2,800-mile for

With the Beijing Olympics just a year away, and desert dunes now only 150 miles away from the city, officials have been dreaming big when it comes to battling legendary Chinese sandstorms in the capital and across the country?s arid north. In 2001, the government approved a new phase of an $8 billion antidesertification campaign, stretching from the capital to Inner Mongolia. The 4,500 kilometer shelterbelt ? with 25 million hectares of trees planted and

Tilo Kunath, a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, found himself chatting with an older gentleman next to him. That had the potential to be sticky: Kunath works with embryonic and extraembryonic stem cell lines, and his work sometimes requires the destruction of human embryos. His traveling companion wasn't exactly quiet about his more socially conservative views.

Plasmid GHRH delivery in a dog. Credit: Courtesy of Patricia Brown" />Plasmid GHRH delivery in a dog. Credit: Courtesy of Patricia Brown A few months after arriving at Baylor College of Medicine in 1995, Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, an assistant professor, adopted an abandoned Jack Russell terrier she found at the cafeteria. Baylor, named for the school, is one of two dogs that Draghia-Akli has lost to cancer in the past six years, and watching his decline was taxing. ?He

Credit: Courtesy of Linda Snook" /> Credit: Courtesy of Linda Snook On some workdays, Milton S. Love happily sinks to the bottom of the sea in a contraption the size of a telephone booth turned on its side. With only a clammy mat to lie on, for a break he gets to sit upright while trying not to bump his head on the three-foot high ceiling. Through a tiny hole, Milton spends a couple of blissful hours counting fish, speaking aloud the names and sizes he sees as a video camera rolls. I

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Credit: Reprinted by permission of Macmillian Publishers, LTD." /> Credit: Reprinted by permission of Macmillian Publishers, LTD. The paper: T. Hessa et al., ?Recognition of transmembrane helices by the endoplasmic reticulum translocon,? Nature, 433:377?81, 2005. (Cited in 88 papers) The finding: Gunnar von Heijn

Credit: © Helen McArdle / Photo Researchers, Inc." /> Credit: © Helen McArdle / Photo Researchers, Inc. The paper: M.F. Fraga, et al. ?Epigenetic differences arise during the lifetime of monozygotic twins.? Proc Natl Acad Sci, 102:10413?4, 2005. (cited in 91 papers) The finding:

The paper: X. Cai et al., ?Human microRNAs are processed from capped, polyadenylated transcripts that can also function as mRNAs.? RNA, 10:1957?66, 2004. (Cited in 99 papers) The finding: Bryan Cullen and colleagues at Duke University and the University of Kansas investigated the development of human micro-RNAs (miR

Credit: Courtesy of The International Union of Crystallography" /> Credit: Courtesy of The International Union of Crystallography S.N. Willis et al., ?Apoptosis initiated when BH3 ligands engage multiple Bcl-2 homologs, not Bax or Bak,? Science, 315:856?9, Feb. 9, 2007. The authors leverage knockout mice lacking BH3-only ?activators? to examine how the Bcl2 protein family cont

Credit: Courtesy of the International Union of Crystallography" /> Credit: Courtesy of the International Union of Crystallography Crystallizing proteins is a daunting task. Last year Alexander McPherson of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues proposed a novel strategy to develop crystals quickly by including high concentrations of small molecules to the so-called mother liquors. They analyzed data on the crystallization of 81 different protein cultur

Stefan Hell and researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany detail an approach to microscopy that achieves a resolution of half the wavelength of light.

Credit: © Frank Rogozienski Photography" /> Credit: © Frank Rogozienski Photography Amy Kiger admits to a healthy dose of yeast envy from time to time. In her tidy, two-year-old lab at the University of California, San Diego, she picks up a thin tube of Drosophila to explain how she?s using the flies to investigate membrane-mediated events that guide cell shape. Yeast genetics may be faster, easier, and better worked out, but for Kiger one of the most exci

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A vial of Koch?s Tuburculin from 1895 resides at Charité Hospital, Berlin. Credit: Courtesy of Terry Sharrer" />A vial of Koch?s Tuburculin from 1895 resides at Charité Hospital, Berlin. Credit: Courtesy of Terry Sharrer Robert Koch (1843?1910), who isolated Mycobacterium tuberculosis in 1882 and proved that it caused tuberculosis, announced at a medical congress in Berlin eight years later that he had developed a substance capable of preventing the growth of the tub