HIV'S ANNIVERSARY >> June 5 marks 25 years since the disease now known as AIDS was first reported (see p. 36), but it was only 51 years ago that researchers first dissected a virus into its constituent parts and put it back together. On June 10, 1955, Heinz L. Fraenkel-Conrat and Robley Williams at the Virus Laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley reported the deconstruction and reconstitution of the tobacco mosaic virus, demonstrating that RNA serves as its genetic material.
A FIRST FOR SYSTEMS BIOLOGY >> On June 1 and 2, Murcia, Spain hosts what is being billed as the 1st International Symposium on Systems Biology: From genomes to in silico and back. "Taking into account that in Spain this is becoming an emerging field, [we wanted] to gather people from everywhere to talk about different aspects of the fundamentals and tools in systems biology," says conference organizer ...
