September 2008

Over a career that spans more than half a century, John Holland, a professor of psychology, electrical engineering, and computer science, invented genetic algorithms, or computer code inspired by evolutionary biology. A MacArthur fellowship recipient, Holland is "really not quite sure" how he became interested in biology, but says he remembers being hooked by "the notion of combining mathematics

The call for a presidential science debate went unheeded, but it was worthwhile.

Finding more founders In the article "Rare History, Common Disease",1 various founder populations were mentioned. Glaringly omitted from these were the Amish, particularly the Old Order Amish. Work on the Amish started when Victor McKusick discovered several genetic defects in a uniquely inbred group of people, the Old Order Amish. This discovery resulted in the publication of Mendelian

Credit: © Matjaz Boncina" /> Credit: © Matjaz Boncina GET POLITICAL » If you'd like to see one of the political figures we profiled in the feature beginning on page 30, you can hear Kenneth Thorpe deliver a keynote at Forum 08, a meeting focused on improving health. Forum 08 is being held Sept. 8 at the Westin Diplomat Resort in Hollywood, Fla. For more information, visit

Dama Laxminarayana processes a lupus patient's blood by centrifugation to obtain white blood cells. Credit: © creative Communications / WFUSM" />Dama Laxminarayana processes a lupus patient's blood by centrifugation to obtain white blood cells. Credit: © creative Communications / WFUSM On the third floor of a molecular biology lab in Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, immunologist Dama Laxmina

Heartbreak came in three acts at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City this summer: animal, vegetable, and mineral. It was Identification Day and museum-goers lugged their scientific treasures triple-wrapped in newspaper, towels, and Hefty garbage bags and tucked inside rolling suitcases, duffels, Coleman coolers, and zippered pants pockets. Local experts waited to receive them wit

The Chiapas catfish's chocolate-brown color and white chin barbels are truly enigmatic. Credit: Courtesy of John Lundberg" />The Chiapas catfish's chocolate-brown color and white chin barbels are truly enigmatic. Credit: Courtesy of John Lundberg In February 2005, John Lundberg, an evolutionary biologist at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, obtained molecular data from a tissue sample that

Richard Merritt Credit: Photo by G.L. Kohuth / Michigan State University" />Richard Merritt Credit: Photo by G.L. Kohuth / Michigan State University Two years ago, entomologist Richard Merritt from Michigan State University pulled an all-nighter in a Toronto hotel room to prepare for seven hours of testimony about a court case so controversial it precipitated the abolition of Canada's death penalty. As part of his te

The experimental chamber used in space. Credit: Courtesy of BioServe Space Technologies / University of Colorado" />The experimental chamber used in space. Credit: Courtesy of BioServe Space Technologies / University of Colorado This spring, the Space Shuttle Discovery carried some interesting cargo: Salmonella bacteria separated by a thin seal from their target host, C.elegans. The cargo came courtesy of SPACEHAB, a Texas-based

Virtual biotechs target and develop translational research.

A paper I read more than 25 years ago taught me a lesson I'll never forget.

The Future of U.S. Science Policy Illustrations by Jordan Domont With an administration change at hand, research could come out of the shadows and into the political light. By Bob Grant Article Extras Ken Thorpe Egils Milbergs John Porter Lana Skirboll 2008 Election Coverage Vote for the next president Which biologist would you elect president? Science and Politics Careers: The Scientist as Politician In late 2001, the George W. Bush

Ken Thorpe An academic who swims in political waters By Kelly Rae Chi © Jordan Domont In 1967, when Ken Thorpe was 11 years old, his father took him to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. speak. They stood in an all-white Detroit suburb and watched King deliver an eloquent speech in a racially-charged environment. "It was remarkable in the sense that he put himself out there in a setting like that knowing that he likely was going to get heckled," Thorp

Egils Milbergs Shaping federal science and technology policy from three time zones away By Bob Grant © Jordan Domont Though economist Egils Milbergs began his career inside the Beltway, he has worked on issues from the national to the local level, and now finds himself about as far away from Washington, DC, as a person passionate about national policy can get - in a place he calls "the other Washington." Chris Gregoire, the Gover

John Porter Advocating science from inside the House By Andrea Gawrylewski © Jordan Domont In 1995 when the Republicans took over the US House of Representatives, times were tight for the Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, which allocates funds to the National Institutes of Health. Under a new budget resolution, the House budget committee told John Porter, then subcommittee chair, he needed to shave

Lana Skirboll The hidden wizard of the NIH By Alla Katsnelson © Jordan Domont The Office of Science Policy at the National Institutes of Health, directed for the last 15 years by former neuroscientist Lana Skirboll, is sometimes jokingly referred to as the OKS - the Office of the Kitchen Sink: What comes over the transom is often half-baked, requiring some quick thinking and foundation-laying to shape useful policy. Skirboll displaye

Building blocks and recombination How studying biological interactions and evolution yields techniques for predicting the outcome of complex interactions. By John Holland Article Extras Biology's Gift to a Complex World--> Biology's Gift to a Complex World Complex Adaptive Systems Genetic algorithms function by recombining the building blocks of a system such as the features of a face or components of a jet engine. Each product of recombinatio

Biology's Gift to a Complex World How studying biological interactions and evolution yields techniques for predicting the outcome of complex interactions. By John Holland Article Extras 1 It broke new ground for aircraft turbine efficiency. In 1990, a Santa Fe, NM-based investment firm called The Prediction Company introduced a new strategy, the long-term success of which attracted the attention of some of the largest finance houses. The

Complex Adaptive Systems By John Holland Complex adaptive systems are comprised of individual components, each with their own function: neurons conveying action potential for movement, antibodies binding foreign antigen for immune defense, companies selling products or services for profit. But when these components come together in a complex adaptive system, new properties emerge that may not have been predicted from the base function of the individual.Source: J

Median Salary by Position, Gender Females Males Percent Difference Academic Positions       College/University Department Head (11-12 month appointment, tenured) $184,250 $213,850 16.07% College/University Department Head (9-10 month appointment, tenured) $140,000 $108,000 -22.86%

Median Salary by Position, Gender Females Males Percent Difference Academic Positions       College/University Department Head (11-12 month appointment, tenured) $184,250 $213,850 16.07% College/University Department Head (9-10 month appointment, tenured) $140,000 $108,000 -22.86%

TheScientist 2008 Life Science Salary Survey Are you making too much money, or too little? Could you make more? Our US salary data in the life sciences can help. By Edyta Zielinska For additional salary data by job title, location and gender, visit http://www.the-scientist.com/salarysurvey/ When Pfizer announced it was closing its Ann Arbor, Michigan, facility in January of last year, Alla Karnovsky, one of more than 2,000 employees aff

Marc Kirschner likes to expose biology's essential processes, such as how a simple microtubule can form such a variety of structures. Lucky for biology.

By Megan Scudellari Tom?to Tomäto brainmaps.org The paper: N. Schauer et al., "Comprehensive metabolic profiling and phenotyping of interspecific introgression lines for tomato improvement," Nature Biotech, 24:447-54, 2006. (Cited in 51 papers) The methods: To explore the genetics behind tomato nutrition and taste, Alisdair Fernie of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology and collaborators embarked on t

User: Robert McWilliams, Division of Medical Oncology at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN Project: Determining whether variations in DNA repair genes affect risk for pancreatic cancer Related Articles Middling Measures Tips for medium-throughput SNP detection Wheat woes Harness Old Faithful Primer price crunch

Read between the lines when you get price points Often, companies will tell you you're paying $0.10 per sample, but "you can't just go off their numbers. You have to really cost it out," says Jeanette Papp, director of the UCLA Genotyping and Sequencing Core Facility. Some companies will sell enough primer for 4,000 samples even if you don't need it. Anticipate the sample quality and whether you

Credit: Bluemoose / wikimedia.org" /> Credit: Bluemoose / wikimedia.org User: Gina Brown-Guedira, Eastern Regional Small Grains Genotyping Lab, USDA, and North Carolina State University, Raleigh Project: Assaying a large number of species of wheat with a handful of SNPs useful for identifying genes for traits such as

User: Vanessa Hayes, Children's Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research, Sydney Project: SNP discovery and validation in blood samples collected on filter paper and stored for years, looking for prostate cancer markers Related Articles Middling Measures Tips for medium-throughput SNP detection

Credit: Melinda / wikimedia.org" /> Credit: Melinda / wikimedia.org User: Jose Royo, Andalusian Center for Development Biology, Spain Project: Determining the role of genetic variations in the development of human diseases and using this information to develop better drug targets Related Articles Middling Measures Tips for medium-th

To ensure complete accuracy and fairness in determining the winners for the Life Science Industry Awards, The Scientist selected BioInformatics, an unbiased third-party research firm based in Arlington, Va. The Life Science Industry Awards are unique as they allow the scientists to determine the winners. BioInformatics designed and fielded a 34-question electronic survey to registered members of The Science Advisory Boar

Scientists' picks as their top suppliers of key instruments and services.

Median Academic Salary by StateThis application is created by interactive maps. You can also have your visited states map on your site. If you see this message, you need to upgrade your flash player.var so = new SWFObject("http://www.interactivemaps.org/visited_states/visited_states.swf", "visitedstates", 500, 275, "7", "#000000");addLocation('CA', '', 'Professor: $167,000Associate Professor: $119,500Assistant Professor: $93,250', ''); //California addLocation('CO', '', 'Profe

Median Salary by specialization var FO = { movie:"/supplementary/flash/Charts/FC_2_3_StckdColumn3D.swf", width:"530", height:"500", majorversion:"8", build:"0", flashvars:"&dataURL=/supplementary/xml/salary_survey2008/specialization.xml&chartWidth=530&chartHeight=500" }; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Replacement content Related Articles: •Life Sciences Salary Survey, 2008• Life Sciences Salary Survey Home• Get more b

Median Salary by ethnicity var FO = { movie:"/supplementary/flash/Charts/FC_2_3_MSColumn3D.swf", width:"530", height:"500", majorversion:"8", build:"0", flashvars:"&dataURL=/supplementary/xml/salary_survey2008/ethnicity.xml&chartWidth=530&chartHeight=500" }; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Replacement content Related Articles: •Life Sciences Salary Survey, 2008• Life Sciences Salary Survey Home• Get more buck for your

Median Salary by Citizenship var FO = { movie:"/supplementary/flash/Charts/FC_2_3_StckdColumn3D.swf", width:"530", height:"500", majorversion:"8", build:"0", flashvars:"&dataURL=/supplementary/xml/salary_survey2008/citizenship.xml&chartWidth=530&chartHeight=500" }; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Replacement content Related Articles: •Life Sciences Salary Survey, 2008• Life Sciences Salary Survey Home• Get more buck for

Median Salary by Organization var FO = { movie:"/supplementary/flash/Charts/FC_2_3_StckdColumn3D.swf", width:"530", height:"500", majorversion:"8", build:"0", flashvars:"&dataURL=/supplementary/xml/salary_survey2008/organization.xml&chartWidth=530&chartHeight=500" }; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Replacement content Related Articles: •Life Sciences Salary Survey, 2008• Life Sciences Salary Survey Home• Get more buck fo

Median Salary by Gender var FO = { movie:"/supplementary/flash/Charts/FC_2_3_MSColumn3D.swf", width:"530", height:"500", majorversion:"8", build:"0", flashvars:"&dataURL=/supplementary/xml/salary_survey2008/gender.xml&chartWidth=530&chartHeight=500" }; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Replacement content Related Articles: •Life Sciences Salary Survey, 2008• Life Sciences Salary Survey Home• Get more buck for your bang&#

Median Salary By Level of Supervisory/Managerial Responsibility var FO = { movie:"/supplementary/flash/Charts/FC_2_3_MSColumn3D.swf", width:"530", height:"500", majorversion:"8", build:"0", flashvars:"&dataURL=/supplementary/xml/salary_survey2008/responsibility.xml&chartWidth=530&chartHeight=500" }; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Replacement content Related Articles: •Life Sciences Salary Survey, 2008• Life Sciences Salary Surv

Two yeast studies begin to identify protein interactions on a genome-wide scale.

Credit: brainmaps.org" /> Credit: brainmaps.org The paper: C. Padoa-Schioppa & J.A. Assad, "Neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex encode economic value," Nature, 441:223-6, 2006. (Cited in 76 papers) The finding: Researchers from Harvard Medical School measured neuronal firing rates in macaques who had been offered different juice rewards. By varying the amounts and types of

Credit: brainmaps.org" /> Credit: brainmaps.org The paper: G. A. Jacoby et al. "qnrB, another plasmid-mediated gene for quinolone resistance," Antimicrob Agents Chemother, 50:1178-82, 2006. (Cited in 65 papers) The finding: Eight years after discovering qnrA, the first plasmid-mediated gene for resistance to the broad-spectrum antibiotic quinolone, George Jacoby of the

Credit: © Alex Maness Photography" /> Credit: © Alex Maness Photography In John Rawls' basement lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, thousands of spotted and striped zebrafish swim in their shoe box-sized tanks. Some of the eggs the fish lay Rawls will make sterile after fertilization - each time creating a new chance to examine the relationship between gut microbes and

Avoiding the pitfalls of medium-throughput SNP detection.

AstraZeneca's Karen Gotting-Smith is using a newly-created position to tackle some old problems.

So you want to change the world? It's easier than you think.

Inverted tubes of gelled macrophage supernate (left) and water (right) for comparison. Credit: © Stossel, T.P., and J.H. Hartwig originally published in J Cell Biol 68:602-619, 1976." />Inverted tubes of gelled macrophage supernate (left) and water (right) for comparison. Credit: © Stossel, T.P., and J.H. Hartwig originally published in J Cell Biol 68:602-619, 1976. It w