The Scientist articles from June 2005

The Scientist archives from June 2005

Basic research: it's worth it.(Editorial)(Editorial)
June 20, 2005... As a society we are making huge investments, both intellectual and financial, in the life sciences. The casual observer might expect the return on this investment to be highly quantified and positively dear-cut. But that casual observer would...

Scientific knowledge as a public good: thinking about benefits of research to society could break down barriers.(Opinion)(Column)
June 20, 2005... Life scientists are accustomed to thinking about quantifying the products of their knowledge in terms of such things as papers published, discoveries made, or, in the case of applied science, diseases treated. But there is another useful way...

Lights ... camera ... science.(science festivals)
June 20, 2005... A science career can sometimes bear more than a passing resemblance to leading a life on the stage. Never has there been greater demand for the kind of investigator willing to exude a bit of razzle-dazzle in order to communicate with the...

What (some) scientists say.(What Scientists Think)
June 20, 2005... FameLab's approach focuses on entertainment, new faces, and diversity, but another recent science communication effort takes a different approach. Jeremy Stangroom, coeditor of The Philosopher's Magazine, has written a new book, What...

Full-time science advisor wanted down under.(Robin Batterham)
June 20, 2005... During the six years that Robin Batterham served as Chief Scientist of Australia, from 1999 until last month, he weathered repeated accusations that his independence was sullied by conflicts of interest. Perhaps that perception was...

MicroRNA target practice: computers suggest thousands of binding sites, but experimental support is missing.(research)
June 20, 2005... About a month before a New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) meeting last February, six of the scheduled speakers received an unusual homework assignment. Each was asked to apply the sequences of two animal microRNAs to an algorithm that his...

Cancer epigenetics enters the mainstream: genetics and genomics must share an ever-widening spotlight.
June 20, 2005... The genetic model of cancer--the idea that key mutations lead to unchecked cellular proliferation--has guided cancer research for decades. Thousands of papers report sequence alterations that disrupt, delete, or overexpress genes, leading to...

The uncertain future for Central Dogma: uncertainty serves as a bridge from determinism and reductionism to a new picture of biology.
June 20, 2005... Nearly two decades ago, Paul H. Silverman testified before Congress to advocate the Human Genome Project. He later became frustrated when the exceptions to genetic determinism, discovered by this project and other investigations, were not...

RNAi's minor setback: researchers continue to wrangle over off-target effects.(Hot Papers)
June 20, 2005... RNA interference seemed poised to transform functional egenomics and therapeutics with the 2001 publication of a paper by Tom Tuschl and colleagues showing that 21-base-pair (bp) RNA duplexes silence mammalian genes in a sequence-dependent...

J. Roos et al., "STIM1, an essential and conserved component of store-operated [Ca.sup.2+] channel function.(Interdisciplinary Research)(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... J. Roos et al., "STIM1, an essential and conserved component of store-operated [Ca.sup.2+] channel function," J Cell Biol, 169:435-45, May 9, 2005. This paper reports that STIMI, an integral membrane protein expressed in endoplasmic...

C.H. Lecellier et al., "A cellular microRNA mediates antiviral defense in human cells,".(Interdisciplinary Research)(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... C.H. Lecellier et al., "A cellular microRNA mediates antiviral defense in human cells," Science, 308:557-60, April 22, 2005. This is a most interesting finding showing that a cellular microRNA restricts the accumulation of a retrovirus in...

M.A. Fabian et al., "A small molecule-kinase interaction map for clinical kinase inhibitors,".(Interdisciplinary Research)(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... M.A. Fabian et al., "A small molecule-kinase interaction map for clinical kinase inhibitors," Nat Biotechnol, 23:329-36, March 2005. This report shows that a promising major class of therapeutics, protein kinase inhibitors, varies widely...

A moonlighting protein repairman.(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... Displaying an unprecedented dual role for a transcription factor, activating transcription factor 2 (ATF2) also responds to DNA damage, according to Ze'ev Ronai and colleagues at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, Calif. For its...

Alternate cell-death program identified.(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... Harvard University's Junying Yuan and colleagues identified a chemical that blocks a programmed cell-death pathway that is non-apoptotic. Yuan's study (1) shows that the chemical, necrostatin-I (Nec-I), has no effect on apoptosis, only on...

Building a better optical trap: from a chance discovery 40 years ago comes the ability to watch polymerases at work.
June 20, 2005... Shortly after the invention of the laser, Bell Labs physicist Arthur Ashkin began exploring the range of the new devices. Could the force of light in the beam move an object, much as a finger pushes a ball, he wondered? If they did, it would...

Walk like a molecular motor: a molecular biophysicist weighs in on kinesin, dynein, and a molecular tug-of-war.
June 20, 2005... Cells are a riot of activity. When a cell divides, chromosomes replicate and segregate into two daughter cells; flagella wiggle around to move sperm; cilia beat so mucous doesn't accumulate in the lung; and nerve cells fire by vesicles moving...

Biology by the numbers: mathematical software packages and programming languages bring quantitative rigor to a qualitative science.
June 20, 2005... When the graduate students and postdocs in Martin Wilson's lab at the University of California, Davis, need to do image processing, they look to an unlikely source. Instead of off-the-shelf image analysis software, Wilson's team, which...

Rosy outlook for blue roses: RNAi may lead to a bouquet of novel colors in the flower industry.
June 20, 2005... More than $27 billion worth of cut flowers are sold in the global marketplace every year. Carnations and chrysanthemums are perennial favorites, but roses lead the way in total revenue. In a business driven by novelty, it's little wonder that...

A new microarray star is born: sciGene automates posthybridization microarray processing.(Little Dipper Microarray Processing System)(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... With the April 2005 release of its Little Dipper Microarray Processing System, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based SciGene has now completed its benchtop system for automated microarray processing from hybridization through slide drying, bringing a...

Pump up the protein volume: new expression system improves production capacity of E. coli.
June 20, 2005... Escherichia coli cells have long been protein-production factories for genetic engineers, but their capacity to generate single proteins has been hampered by two problems--exogenous proteins are often fatal to the cells, and endogenous...

Generic drugs: a big business getting bigger: Big Pharma is increasingly interested in getting a piece of the generics pie.
June 20, 2005... When Novartis International announced in February that it was making a play for two generic drug companies, it was viewed as an acknowledgment that generics could play an increasingly important role in the pharmaceutical business. In late...

I'll see you in court: universities on the bumpy road to technology transfer can end up in litigation with pharma, biotech, and even their own scientists.
June 20, 2005... The University of Rochester thought it had struck pay dirt on April II, 2000, when it was awarded a broad patent covering inhibitors of the enzyme cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) based on the work of researchers Donald Young, Michael K. O'Banion,...

Testing fetal DNA: getting closer to the goal: a maternal blood test for prenatal diagnosis.
June 20, 2005... When Charles Cantor and Dennis Lo flew to Pattaya, Thailand in late 2002 to attend a conference, neither man knew they would end up collaborating on a blood test that could one day reduce reliance on invasive prenatal diagnostic methods such...

French reorganization for funding worries researchers.(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... The French government's long-awaited blueprint for reforming the country's research system, recently unveiled, has sparked fears that it will result in less money being available for basic research. The impending reorganization has...

UK prepares for animal protests.(Research Defence Society)(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... The UK's Research Defence Society (RDS)--a body funded by researchers, universities, and medical charities--has created a position of senior project manager to coordinate how universities deal with animal rights activists. The individual...

Concern over renaming at Hong Kong University.(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... The University of Hong Kong announced that it was going to rename its Faculty of Medicine, which conducts groundbreaking research into severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and avian influenza, in honor of a local tycoon who recently...

Madison, Wisconsin: the Midwest's low-key hotspot: technology licensing and stem cells help fuel this progressive biotech powerhouse.
June 20, 2005... In the middle of dairy country, nestled by four glacial lakes, Madison, Wisconsin is quietly emerging as a biotechnology and life science powerhouse. The state's capital, Madison is a study in contrasts. Here the Midwest conservative work...

Please stop, you're interfering with my research: astronomers have opinions about allowing cell phones on planes. What if biologists applied the same logic to human endeavors?
June 20, 2005... Thank you, members of Congress, for the opportunity to address you at this hearing today. On behalf of the 300,000 members of Scientists for Responsible Progress, we are here to exhort you to pass legislation that will make the future of...

Your next job in pharma.
June 20, 2005... These are interesting times for life scientists working in the pharmaceutical industry. By many measures, business is booming. The total drug pipeline has swelled by 15% a year over the past three years, compared to the usual annual rate of...

The outlook.
June 20, 2005... How will growing regulatory and financial pressures and an increasingly globalized labor market affect career prospects in pharma for life scientists? What key skills are required by people hoping to work in the new and growing field of...

Big makeover for Big Pharma: cost pressures, outsourcing, and regulatory burdens mean hiring shifts, but the future still looks bright for life scientists seeking industry jobs.
June 20, 2005... Since the New York City life science technology-consulting firm Intrasphere Technologies opened an office in India, Samuel Goldman, cofounder and chief technology officer, says he works fairly bizarre hours, scheduling 6:00 A.M. meetings on a...

Prescriptions go personal: pharmacogenomics is gradually changing the way pharma companies do business.(THE OUTLOOK)
June 20, 2005... After months of missed deadlines, the US Food and Drug Administration this March finally released its Guidance for Industry on when and how drug companies should submit genomics data, and how the agency will evaluate it. The halting...

Having a life: drug companies' family-friendly perks, flexibility help employees maintain work/life balance.
June 20, 2005... Keith Miller, a 31-year-old supervisor of fill operations in the clinical production unit of Berlex, the US affiliate of Schering G Germany, never imagined his nearly 2-year-old twins would end up in body casts. The girls were born with...

Border blues: visa changes make the US job market tighter for foreign-born scientists.
June 20, 2005... Now that Novartis is hoping to grow its R&D division from 850 to 1,100 scientists, recruiting, which used to be a fall ritual, has become a year-round affair, with teams of scientists and human resources hitting more than a dozen universities...

The pipeline.(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... The path a compound takes from preclinical testing to the market is known universally as "the pipeline." Life scientists play key roles in every step of the process. The eight science professionals profiled on the following pages illustrate...

Lori Klaman: principal research scientist in metabolic diseases.
June 20, 2005... For Lori Klaman, the fight against diabetes is a personal one. The scientist's grandmother died from the disease, and her father suffered from it as well. That family history, coupled with her driving intellectual curiosity, is what keeps...

Deborah Hartman: director of lead discovery, CNS and pain research.
June 20, 2005... No two days are quite the same," says Deborah Hartman, director of lead discovery in central nervous system and pain research at AstraZeneca in Wilmington, Del. Hartman, who started out as a bench scientist, is now a manager in charge of...

Ping Qiu: associate principal scientist in bioinformatics.
June 20, 2005... Anyone considering a career in bioinformatics has to relish change, says Schering-Plough bioinformatics specialist Ping Qiu. "Bioinformatics is a very dynamic field," he says from his office in Kenilworth, NJ. "Every day there are new...

Carlos Santos: scientist I, methods development.
June 20, 2005... Life is good right now for Carlos Santos, who every weekday morning kisses his new baby daughter goodbye as he heads off to a career he loves. "Sometimes I can get so into it that I just lose track of time. It's just that kind of job....

Iain Webb: associate director of oncology clinical development.
June 20, 2005... When Iain Webb left his job as medical director at Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for Millennium Pharmaceuticals three and a half years ago, he found industry to be "a different world," he recalls. "In my previous position, I had...

Thom Rowland: vice president of US commercial operations, gastroenterology, and women's health.(Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc.)
June 20, 2005... It's most definitely a career with a purpose," says Thom Rowland of his job at Marietta, Ga.-based Solvay Pharmaceuticals, where he's vice president of US commercial operations for Solvay's gastroenterology and women's health product lines....

Bogdan Dziurzynski: independent regulatory consultant.
June 20, 2005... As a young man at the height of the Vietnam War, Bogdan Dziurzynski had to make a choice. Should he wait to be drafted, or volunteer with the hope of landing a better assignment? Dziurzynski decided to volunteer. He had a degree in laboratory...

Jamie Stacey: staffing manager for global pharmaceutical research and development.(The PIPELINE)
June 20, 2005... Jamie Stacey rises before dawn most days, and she and her 17-month-old son arrive at Abbott Laboratories' headquarters before 7:00 A.M. The toddler joins the other children in Abbott's daycare center, while Stacey heads up to her office to...

Get on board: internet job sites are revolutionizing the job search process.
June 20, 2005... For David Baker, landing a job in 1990 meant paging through newspaper help wanted sections, visiting the career center at University of California, Los Angeles to research biotech companies, sending lots of snail mail, and waiting weeks for...

Getting past the screens: recruiters talk about resume strategies.
June 20, 2005... With a computer program often a resume's first reader, the nclusion of keywords to get you beyond such automated sentries has become a key part of effective resume writing. And with any luck, a real person will eventually see your resume,...

Measuring up: pharma is realizing that not only is managing innovation possible--it pays.
June 20, 2005... Pharma companies looking for ways to squeeze more productivity from R&D are finding that a decades-old technique called performance management can produce dramatic results without adding costs. Put very simply, performance management...

The ladder to success: a few tips for moving up in the changing world of Big Pharma.(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... 1 NETWORK People working at large pharmaceutical firms will stand out from their colleagues if they stay on top of who's doing what at smaller firms, so their company can strike up joint ventures that fatten their early pipeline,...

You may not need a PhD ... many opportunities exist in pharma for science-savvy master's degree holders.
June 20, 2005... Justin Provchy had been accepted to two PhD programs in mathematics when he received a package of information about Claremont, Calif.-based Keck Graduate Institute's master of bioscience degree. At the last minute, he decided to forgo the PhD...

But do you need an MBA? Having an extra degree can give scientists an edge in pharmaceuticals.(Master of business administration degree)
June 20, 2005... Roberto Rosenkranz decided to get an MBA after his PhD in pharmacology and toxicology out of pure interest in the field, not to advance his career. But while working at Syntex (later purchased by Roche) his extra degree caught the attention...

The view from the top: twenty-first century pharma needs leaders with scientific chops, business know-how.(The GUIDE)(Interview)
June 20, 2005... More than one path can lead to a job as head of R&D at a pharmaceutical company. Some scientists arrive from academia or medicine, while others work their way up from within the industry. Yet only a handful of men and women will make it to...

Science is not relative.(Editorial)
June 6, 2005... In a recent essay bemoaning the loss of psychology in favor of what he considers an overly biologically deterministic psychiatry, Richard C. Morias, a senior editor at Forbes, confesses a "vague suspicion" that "21st century America is......

How to fix peer review: separating its two functions--improving manuscripts and judging their scientific merit--would help.(Opinion)
June 6, 2005... Despite its importance as the ultimate gatekeeper of scientific publication and funding, peer review is known to engender bias, incompetence, excessive expense, ineffectiveness, and corruption. A surfeit of publications has documented the...

Nurture vs. Nature.(Notebook)
June 6, 2005... A pair of chimps pucker-up for a kiss on the inaugural front cover of Nurture, a new magazine from the Nature Publishing Group. But Nurture is not another in a string of specialty journals that might have been called Nature Evolution. The...

Swimming with the mycobacteria.(Notebook)
June 6, 2005... The patients were working out in a hospital's warm therapeutic pool in Boulder, Colorado, when Mark Hernandez walked in and dipped sterile bottles in the water. He also set up a liquid impinger, a device that suctions air from above the pool...

Red in tooth and claw, and football shirts.(Notebook)
June 6, 2005... If you want to win at combative sports, emulate the most aggressive and dominant animals: wear red. That's the message of recent research by Russell Hill and Robert Barton, evolutionary anthropologists at Durham University, UK. Their analysis...

What is digital biology?
June 6, 2005... It's more than simple databasing, mining, or in silico experimentation. To create and analyze nature-inspired computer simulation of biological systems--from pathways to cells to entire ecosystems--and then use this information to devise new...

The Hum and the Genome: as genome sequence data accumulates exponentially, the infrastructure that handles it all also needs to break new ground.
June 6, 2005... The air at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, near Cambridge, fairly hums with electricity. At the end of a long corridor, on the other side of a set of double doors in what's known as J-block lies the Institute's data center,...

Minds must unite: it's time for experimentalists to stop ignoring computational modelers.(VISION)
June 6, 2005... Recently, in the halls of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley, Calif., a revelation was taking shape. During a workshop tailored to unite neuroscientists, mathematicians, and computer scientists in the study of the...

Making biological computing smarter: tools for thought in the age of biological knowledge.(VISION)
June 6, 2005... Experimental biologists today sit at the edge of enormous bodies of information. Although much of it still resides in journals, primary information increasingly inhabits the digital realm. Knowledge bases, which represent facts and...

Secondary endosymbiosis exposed: a gene sequence continues to make waves in algal research.(Research)
June 6, 2005... Last summer's publication of the first diatom genome provided insight into the workings of a tiny organism with huge potential for environmental, industrial, and research applications. (1) A growing appreciation of the sequence, however, has...

"Industrial" pollutants reveal a surprising origin: radiocarbon dating distinguishes environmental toxins as works of man or nature.(Research)
June 6, 2005... After a True's beaked whale washed ashore in Virginia, Woods Hole chemist Emma Teuten toiled for seven months trying to whittle 10 kilograms of blubber down to a milligram of methoxylated polybrominated diphenyl ethers--chemicals synthesized...

Comparative genomics on the rise: yeast species comparison reveals annotational power in alignments.(Hot Papers)
June 6, 2005... Simple, fast-growing, and sexually reproducing, yeast have been a stalwart model for generations of geneticists. The first eukaryote sequenced nearly a decade ago, and amenable to high-throughput techniques, they have also led the charge in...

Catalase extends mouse lifespan.(Brief Article)
June 6, 2005... Mice engineered to produce high levels of the antioxidant catalase live longer than their wild-type counterparts. Researchers observed the largest lifespan extension when they targeted the enzyme to mitochondria. The results lend support to...

HIV-1 induces RNA silencing.(RESEARCH)(Brief Article)
June 6, 2005... HIV-1 elicits RNA silencing in human cells, but it also contains a sequence that suppresses the process, according to researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Nucleic acid-based immunity in mammalian cells...

Molecular navigation for monarchs.(RESEARCH; butterfly)
June 6, 2005... Researchers have identified a molecular pathway possibly linking the Monarch butterfly's central circadian clock to photoreceptors involved in its "sun compass," which is used to orient its flight during migration. (1) Steven Reppert and...

New thermocyclers hit the street: PCR instruments keep getting faster, cheaper, and better.(Technology)
June 6, 2005... In less than three decades, the polymerase chain reaction has evolved from a slow, labor-intensive practice that was initially performed manually and only by the initiated few, to a fast, powerful, easy-to-use tool found in life science...

Finding heterogeneous loci with human-mouse cell hybrids: "conversion analysis" tops DNA sequencing in head-to-head comparison.(Tools & Tech)
June 6, 2005... Bert Vogelstein has an unusual complaint about the humans whose genetic defects he studies: "We're diploid." That can make it difficult to detect mutations in individuals who are heterozygous at particular loci, a situation that can occur...

Large-scale protein purification down under: twelve-module unit will aid structural, functional studies.(Tools & Tech)
June 6, 2005... Australia's Monash University recently purchased the world's largest parallel protein purification workstation: a 12-module AKTAxpress system from Amersham Biosciences of Piscataway, NJ, a subsidiary of GE Healthcare. The system can...

New amines on the block: synthetic amino acids aid understanding of large protein complexes.(Tools & Tech)
June 6, 2005... Scientists searching for protein-protein interactions generally must look for them in vitro. But available techniques, such as chemical crosslinking and coimmunoprecipitation, are prone to false-positive and false-negative results. Cell lysis...

Shake-and-make proteins: 3-D models illustrate biomolecular self-assembly.(Tools & Tech)
June 6, 2005... Arthur Olson is shaking up the molecular world. A structural biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., Olson has been making models of proteins, DNA strands, and other biological objects for more than 25 years--first by...

A personal confocal imager: BD Biosciences releases new version of CARV system.(Tools & Tech)(Brief Article)
June 6, 2005... BD Biosciences-Bioimaging Systems of Rockville, Md., has released a second-generation version of its CARV confocal imager. According to product manager Baggi Somasundaram, the CARV II is the only full spectrum (white-light), pinhole-based...

Good-bye licensing deal, hello partner! Biotechs get what they want using strategic partnerships and alliances.(BioBusiness)
June 6, 2005... Medarex, a Princeton, NJ, biotech focused on monoclonal antibodies, has done dozens of straight licensing deals in the past, including an agreement signed last year with Pfizer to produce 50 antibody products over 10 years. Pfizer paid $80...

Perlegen Sciences' recipe for success: this biotech is fueling the fire of the International HapMap Project. What else does the company have cooking?(BioBusiness)
June 6, 2005... Few people would envision a former Florida shrimp processor leading a multimillion-dollar Silicon Valley biotechnology company. But Brad Margus is no ordinary shrimp processor. Margus, the CEO of Perlegen Sciences in Mountain View, Calif.,...

Taking aim at neglected diseases: big pharma can do more to tackle the diseases of the developing world, even without a financial incentive.(Vision)
June 6, 2005... In Singapore, we have found the best of both worlds. Two years ago, Novartis established a public-private partnership called the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases (NITD) in this Southeast Asian island-state. The NITD, a wholly owned...

UK groups want to create archive to mimic PubMed Central.(Update)
June 6, 2005... Several British funding organizations say they are seeking proposals from groups interested in running a new free-access archive of papers arising from research they have supported. The idea is to establish a UK version of PubMed Central,...

Canadian court orders review of whistleblower case.(Update; veterinary pharmaceutical industry)(Brief Article)
June 6, 2005... Three Health Canada scientists, who say they were fired for raising questions about the way the agency approves veterinary drugs, have won another round in their years-long battle for reinstatement. The Federal Court quietly released a...

US report recommends new visa category for graduate students, postdocs.(Update)
June 6, 2005... A National Academies committee issued a report in May that calls for the creation of a new category of visa to make it easier for international graduate students and postdocs to study in the United States. "Even with the improvements in...

Best places to work in industry, 2005: satisfying work is key, but companies with strong ethics that show they appreciate workers make it to the top of the list.(Best Places)
June 6, 2005... For the third year in a row, The Scientist has asked industry scientists to tell us what makes their company a great--or not so great--place to work. We took the factors scientists rated as the most important in terms of job satisfaction, and...

Finding the right fit: industry jobs: the good, the bad, and the ugly.(Best Places)
June 6, 2005... Paul Carter was a professor at the University of Wisconsin before jumping to his current position as director of global agronomy sciences at Pioneer Hi-Bred International, in Johnston, Iowa. He's now spent half of his career in industry and...

Bring me your genomes: Ewan Birney has been working in genome bioinformatics since its, and nearly his own, infancy.(Reverse Transcript)
June 6, 2005... In 1991, Ewan Birney, a lad of 19, left England with his high-school diploma and went to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) to "fool around" for a year before going to college. His visit was part of a program devised by CSHL president James...