Applied Genetics News articles from March 2002

Applied Genetics News archives from March 2002

BASIC SCIENCE: Therapeutic Cloning Demonstrated.
March 1, 2002... Therapeutic cloning is a set of techniques that promises "patient- specific" embryonic stem cells that can, in principle, be differentiated into any cell type in the body. Proponents believe that one day it will be possible to replace...

Why We Are Human.
March 1, 2002... There are only about 300 genes in the human genome that have no homologues in the rest of the animal kingdom. Products of these genes and their interactions with the rest of the proteome presumably determine the unique properties of human...

Fusion Protein in C. Elegans.
March 1, 2002... An Israeli-U.S. team of scientists has identified a protein that is essential to the process of cell fusion, a critical phase in normal animal development and in the fertilization of eggs by sperm. The study, published in the March issue of...

GENOMICS: Genetic Basis for Endometriosis.
March 1, 2002... A woman has more than five times the normal risk of developing endometriosis if her sister has the disease, according to research published in the latest issue of Human Reproduction. Moreover, even having a cousin with endometriosis raises a...

Mighty-Mice Don't Get Fat.
March 1, 2002... For mice genetically altered to get fat, knocking out a particular gene keeps them both leaner and healthier, Johns Hopkins scientists report in the March 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. That "lean" gene encodes for myostatin,...

Pancreatic Cancer Gene Mapped.
March 1, 2002... Researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (1100 Fairview Ave. N., P.O. Box 19024, Seattle, WA 98109-1024; Tel: 206/667-2896; Website: www.fhcrc.org) and the University of Washington School of Medicine, in collaboration with...

Natural Selection Speeds Up.
March 1, 2002... Researchers from the University of Chicago (5801 South Ellis Ave., Chicago, IL 60637; Tel: 773/702-1234; Website: www.uchicago.edu) led by ecology professor Chung-I Wu, report in the February 28 issue of Nature that natural selection plays a...

VACCINES: Merck Presents Early HIV Results.
March 1, 2002... Merck (P.O. Box 100, Whitehouse Station, NJ 08889-0100 USA; Tel: 908/423-1000) presented results from its closely watched Phase I trials of its HIV vaccine at the 9th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. Results from the...

Use a Parasite to Fight a Parasite.
March 1, 2002... Dartmouth Medical School (Hanover, NH 03755 USA; Tel: 603/646- 1110; Website: www.dartmouth.edu) geneticists have discovered how to weaken a common human parasite to prevent disease in an animal model after infection by the normal parasite....

Virus Protects Against West Nile.
March 1, 2002... U.S. government scientists, led by Alexander Pletnev of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, Bethesda, MD), have developed a hybrid vaccine that protects mice from West Nile virus (WNV) infection, as reported in the...

CELL THERAPY: Oxygen Key to Stem Cell Differentiation.
March 1, 2002... Stem cells will not differentiate to adipocytes under hypoxic conditions, according to a results published in Developmental Cell [2(3), 331-341, 2002] by scientists from Stanford University (Stanford, CA 94305; Tel:650/723-2300; Website:...

Michael J. Fox Funds Parkinson's Projects.
March 1, 2002... The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF, Grand Central Station, P.O. Box 4777, New York, NY 10163; Website: michaeljfox.org) has awarded nine grants totaling nearly $4.4 million to researchers pursuing the development of a...

AG-BIO: Roots, Leaves, and Stems.
March 1, 2002... Maybe they'll call it Niklas and Enquist's Law: "The mass of a plant's leaves and stems is proportionally scaled to that of its roots in a mathematically predictable way, regardless of species or habitat." As a consequence, biologists can now...

Screening for Pathogenic Proteins.
March 1, 2002... A University of Toronto (Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S; Tel: 416/978-2011; Website: www.utoronto.ca) geneticist and his colleagues have invented a technique that clarifies the relationship between bacterial pathogens and their plant hosts, which...

How Plants Resist Pathogens.
March 1, 2002... Plants have effective mechanisms aimed at protecting themselves against bacteria and fungi. "We've identified a key molecular pathway within plant cells," says scientist Jen Sheen of the molecular biology department at Massachusetts...

Odorant Receptor Common to Bugs.
March 1, 2002... Sentigen Corp. (3960 Broadway, New York, NY 10032-1543; Tel: 212/740-0011; Website: www.sentigencorp.com), a wholly owned subsidiary of Sentigen Holding Corp., has identified for an odorant receptor gene, known as Or83b, that appears to be...

INDUSTRY NEWS: War on Cancer Redux.
March 1, 2002... California Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced the "The National Cancer Act of 2002," designed to reinvigorate the Nation's "War on Cancer" that was declared 31 years ago by then- President Richard M. Nixon when he signed the National...

Idaho Center Studies Microbe Evolution.
March 1, 2002... The University of Idaho (UI) has landed a $10.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the evolution of pathogens. A new UI Center for Research on Processes in Evolution will focus on the evolution of drug resistance in...

CALENDAR.
March 1, 2002... April 6-10, 2002. 93rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, San Francisco, CA. Contact: Tel: 215/440- 9300; Email: meetings@aacr.org April 20-24, 2002. Experimental Biology 2002: Translating the Genome, Bethesda,...