Notebook

CHANGES INSTITUTED: With the status change complete, director Francis Collins says he’s now working on setting new goals. Rumors that had been flying around the National Institutes of Health in early January about a status change for the National Center for Human Genome Research (NCHGR) (S. Benowitz, The Scientist, Jan. 20, 1997, page 1) turned out to be true. On January 14, NCHGR officially became the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Except for some added flexibility in awarding grants, the fact that the center has become an institute changes little, according to director Francis Collins. "This is a recognition that NCHGR has [already] been operating effectively as an institute" because of its intramural research program and research award-granting authority, he says. Collins also sees the new status as lending "a sense of permanence" to the Human Genome Project (HGP), the 15-year, $3 billion international effort to locate and sequence the 100,000 or so human genes, an undertaking that has been led at NIH by NCHGR. "We now need to set new goals for the future of the institute," he states. "What kind of genomic approaches in biology and medicine will be needed in the 21st century?" To Maynard Olson, a professor of medical genetics and genetics at the University of Washington School of Medicine who directs one of six Human Genome Project gene-sequencing centers, the move is important. "I think it sends the right message," he asserts. "It's great if it stabilizes the center's position as a permanent feature of the National Institutes of Health landscape." Olson comments that the success of the center and the HGP "has brought a lot of interest from the other institutes, and the new status will only serve to foster greater research collaborations in the future." WINTER SADNESS With the deaths of several notable researchers, including a trio of Nobel laureates, January was a month of mourning for the science community. Biochemist Melvin Calvin, 85, died January 8, biochemist Alexander Robertus Todd, 89, the next day, and urologist Charles B. Huggins, 95, three days after that. Calvin won 1961's Nobel in chemistry for his research into various stages of photosynthesis, while Huggins shared the 1966 prize in medicine with F. Peyton Rous for his work on the relationship between hormones and prostate and breast cancer. Todd, the 1957 Nobel winner in chemistry, investigated the chemical structure of nucleic acids, laying much of the groundwork for later discoveries into the structure of genes. In addition, pathologist Oscar Auerbach, 92, the first researcher to find evidence of a link between smoking and human lung cancer, died January 15, and Clyde W. Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930, died two days later. DOING TIME: Wang Dan is being held in China. More than 2,500 people, including 23 Nobel laureates, have signed a petition asking Chinese officials to release a dissident and former student sentenced to 11 years in prison for "conspiring to subvert the government." Cosponsors of the petition include the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Committee of Concerned Scientists, and Human Rights in China. According to an NYAS statement, Wang Dan, 27, a leader of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, is being imprisoned for accepting a scholarship for correspondence courses at the University of California, Berkeley; publishing articles on human rights issues abroad; and raising money to assist sufferers of political repression. "He's simply being made a scapegoat for political reasons-for show reasons, really," states Joseph Birman, chairman of NYAS's Human Rights of Scientists Committee and a professor of physics at City University of New York. "That's one of the main reasons why the [science] community has gotten terribly upset about it. It seems like a flexing of the muscles on the part of the authorities to intimidate everybody." The petition is available at http://www.nyas.org/humanrts.htm. Signers are requested to send their names, affiliations, and a message reading, "I endorse the petition on behalf of Wang Dan" to humanrights@nyas.org. CHIEF EXECUTIVE: George Stamatoyannopoulos is the first president of a new gene-therapy society. A group of eminent gene therapists recently announced they are forming a new society for their discipline, the American Society of Gene Therapy (ASGT). The society's first president, George Stamatoyannopoulos, head of the division of medical genetics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, tells The Scientist: "Last July, a number of us thought that gene therapy had matured to the point where it needed a scientific organization to represent the field. There's a great deal of enthusiasm from everyone." One of the group's first tasks is to organize its inaugural national meeting, which will be held in Seattle in May 1998. To encourage participation by younger researchers, the society is planning not to charge student and postdoctoral members registration fees for the conference. The group is also considering creating a new gene therapy journal or adopting an existing one as the society's official publication. Stamatoyannopoulos says that two journals-Human Gene Therapy and Gene Therapy-have shown interest. For more information, contact the society at the Markey Molecular Medicine Center, Box 357720, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash. 98195; (206) 543-3526. Fax: (206) 543-3050. ASGT Web page: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~asgt. Last month a multi-institutional team led by Robert Freedman, director of the Denver VA Medical Center Schizophrenia Research Center, identified a new gene associated with schizophrenia (R. Freedman et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 94:587-92, 1997). Using genetic linkage studies among families with a history of the disease, the group found a defect in the gene for the a7-nicotinic cholinergic receptor on chromosome 15. These receptors act as the brain's informational filters, helping it to separate important stimuli from useless noise. A neurological mistake like this may help explain why some schizophrenics have trouble screening out extraneous background noise like the sound of a jackhammer or air conditioner. Freedman, who is also a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, was surprised to find a single gene trait that could be related to a specific neurobiologically important receptor. "We could have easily linked to a spot on a chromosome where we wouldn't know what the most likely gene would be." Another unexpected finding was that the defective nicotinic receptor might be connected to heavy smoking-sometimes up to four packs a day-among schizophrenics. Nicotinic receptors are normally activated by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine but can also be activated by nicotine from tobacco. The researchers suggested that cigarettes might dampen the noise-filtering problems. But, as Freedman emphasizes, this study is one small piece of a complicated disease. Five other schizophrenia-related genes have already been identified. For now, "the critical thing is to find the mutation," he remarks. "We now need to determine exactly how the DNA has been altered and how that results in altered function." HOPEFUL: New AAAS president-elect M.R.C. Greenwood plans to work to improve science funding and education. M.R.C. Greenwood, chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and former associate director for science at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, is the new president-elect of the Washington, D.C.-based American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Greenwood, a biologist and specialist in the genetics of obesity, will officially become president-elect on February 19. She succeeds Mildred Dresselhaus, Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who will become AAAS president. Greenwood already has plans for her new job. Topping her to-do list, she says, is continuing to work to improve science funding and graduate education, and to identify the 21st-century industries that scientists will work in. Greenwood would also like AAAS to help define the future of United States scientists by "discussing the importance of scientific literacy in the nation's schools, and in training new graduate students to face the next century's challenges." The former White House official contends that the 1998 federal science budget "will be the one to watch. It will be the first serious working budget of the 105th Congress, and it will tell us whether and how the country will continue to invest in R&D." She sees "a continuing fight to hold on to the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation budgets, and to certain aspects of Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and NASA [budgets]." Photo: Robert Barker SPRING FORWARD: Patrick Concannon and friend. The little furball that caused Bill Murray such trouble in Groundhog Day may do more than give 15 minutes of fame to Punxsutawney, Pa., the home of alleged spring forecaster Phil the groundhog, who did his thing earlier this week. According to a Cornell University researcher, examining the seasonal cycles of groundhogs, also known as woodchucks, could prove beneficial for human biomedical research. Patrick W. Concannon, a senior research associate in the department of physiology in Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine, believes that the internal rhythms that guide groundhogs' pronounced seasonal changes-a 2,000 percent variance in daily food intake, for example-may be applicable to changes in the human body. He suspects that groundhogs' seasonal cycles-triggered by differing exposures to light and causing a variety of biochemical changes-can be used to gain greater insight into such areas as cancer and cancer treatment, blood-cell functions, brain activity, and mental health. As for Groundhog Day, Concannon points out that it lies halfway between the winter solstice and vernal equinox and comes at a point when many woodchucks-especially those in southern Pennsylvania-emerge from hibernation. He says it's consistent with historical midwinter celebrations "intended to keep people out of the winter doldrums." He adds, however, that "in terms of any weather prediction, that doesn't make sense at all. It's just a matter of in any weather, [in areas] where there's light out, an animal will cast its shadow."

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