November 2005

The last time I wrote about vaccines was two years ago – November 17, 2003, to be precise.1 That editorial crackled with frustration about the status of the most effective health intervention that has ever been invented:"Vaccines are unattractive targets for industry, underappreciated from the public health perspective, underfunded by basic research organizations, and treated with suspicion by the public."It's a pleasure to report that, two years later, there are the beginnings of a remark

and The Wharton School's online journal.

Lemon juice may help beat AIDS; genetically modified crops will create superweeds; measles vaccine may be responsible for autism; and mobile phones can cut male fertility by a third.

Steve Irwin, a.k.a. the Crocodile Hunter, is a pretty big star these days.

Astrobiologists haven't yet found life among the stars.

Less than two weeks into college, Emily Adams got a phone call about a psychology study that could earn her $400.

Amosquito alights on a human victim and pierces the skin, injecting its salivary mixture of anticoagulants to make blood flow smoothly while feeding.

Scientists have identified a candidate taste receptor for lipids.

Using a novel bioinformatics approach, researchers identified a gene fusion that seems to occur in a majority of prostate cancers.

Neuronal cells clogged with a mutant protein associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) die within hours after clumps first form, researchers report.1 The finding directly links aggregation of malformed proteins with cell death characteristic of the disease, the authors claim.By watching individual cells over the course of 48 hours, Richard Morimoto at Northwestern University and colleagues demonstrated that most cultured neurons die between 6 and 24 hours after mutant superoxide dismut

Richard Houlston works at the Institute of Cancer Research in Sutton, UK, where he searches for genes that confer susceptibility to disease.

Every life scientist practices due diligence.

It was the first Saturday of Spring 2003, and Joe DeRisi and his postdoc David Wang were staked out at either end of the University of California, San Francisco's Genentech Hall waiting for the FedEx truck.