The Scientist articles from March 2002

The Scientist archives from March 2002

Biomedical engineers, not bomb makers: Russian nuclear scientists keep busy developing new medical products. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Efforts to keep Russian scientists fully employed, thus away from countries seeking their expertise in making weapons of mass destruction, seem to be bearing fruit, according to Victor Alessi, president and CEO of the Arlington, Va.-based US...

Bringing life to databases; a new information storage and retrieval system will fuse information from European life scientists. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... To scientists in navigating boundless life sciences data sources, the European Commission (EC) will provide 5 million [euro] over the next three years to the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) to coordinate E-BioSci. The project...

Down with the dogma; DNA dissenter draws discussion. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... How about Barry Commoner's piece in Harper's? In taking a major swipe at DNA, the Human Genome Project, and agricultural biotech, (B. Commoner, "Unraveling the DNA Myth," Harper's Magazine, 304:39-47, February 2002), the crusading...

Deterring diabetes: [beta] cells take an active role in their own defense. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Beta cells, once called the innocent bystanders of the autoimmune response that results in their destruction and invariably diabetes, may play a more active role in their own defense. Type I diabetes has often been associated with multiple...

Another drawback for dope: cocaine use accelerates HIV proliferation. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Cardiac arrest, seizures, extreme irritability, and impotence are all attributed to cocaine use. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, AIDS Institute have added another deleterious side effect: the accelerated spread of...

Genetic screening--while-u-wait: silver and gold decorations could make SNP detection a snap. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... A team of researchers has taken a nanoscale step toward creating a simple handheld genetic-testing device that could eventually find its way into every doctor's office (S.-). Park et al., "Array-based electrical detection of DNA with...

The personal side of science. (Commentary).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... When we ask what you would like to see more of in The Scientist, one of the suggestions we always get is "more personal stories of science." We're taking steps in that direction. We introduced a new feature Feb. 18 called Profile, which...

Ontology recapitulates Philology. (Life Sentences).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... A few years ago, at a meeting at Dana Point in Southern California, I mistook the number of the room in which our breakfast was to be served and found myself in a room full of strangers. I can't remember whether they were the Veterinarians or...

The Aha! Factor. (Opinion).(medical education)(Editorial)
March 18, 2002... In one of my pathology lab courses for second-year medical students, we were reviewing the gross and microscopic findings from the autopsy of a patient who had died following acute pulmonary embolism. As I was going through the features that...

Canadian research funding. (Letters).
March 18, 2002... Regarding the funding of research in Canada, (1) new money has been injected in a big way, by Canadian standards, with the creation of Canadian Institutes of Health Research. It started in 2000 with a budget inherited from its predecessor...

Toward a complete record. (Letters).
March 18, 2002... In light of the recent discussion of the disregard syndrome, (1) I would like to add something to your Jan. 7 cover story on SNPs. (2) The fact that most nucleotide substitutions are synonymous, and the idea that the ratio of nonsynonymous to...

Going strong at 75; the articles on this and the following pages mark the 75th birthday of Sydney Brenner, one of the most inventive and influential scientists of his generation. (News).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Elegance / Elegans Roger Kornberg, one of Arthur's boys, has a Sydney Brenner story. We all do, but his is more telling than most. Roger spent four years in the 1970s as a postdoc with Francis Crick and Sydney at the Medical Research...

Student years at Witwatersrand. (News).(recollection of scientist Sydney Brenner during college)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Those were heady days at Wits (the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) in the 1940s when a wide-eyed and tousle-haired Sydney (Syd) Brenner began to lay the foundations of an extraordinary career. Having matriculated from high...

`Young' Brenner. (News).(scientist Sydney Brenner)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... I always think of Sydney as young Brenner partly because he was born one day after me and partly because he has successfully maintained his youthful exuberance right up to the present. I first met the then literally young Brenner more than 50...

Cambridge and the code. (News).(recollections of working with scientist Sydney Brenner)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Sydney and I shared an office in Cambridge for 20 years, starting in 1956. I first met him in 1953 when he came over from Oxford, with Leslie Orgel and Jack Dunitz, to see the model of the double helix that Jim Watson and I had just made, but...

Asilomar and recombinant DNA. (News).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... In 1974, the scientific community was stunned by a letter in Science from a group of eminent biologists, of which I was one. It called for a moratorium on the conduct of certain kinds of experiments using the newly developed recombinant DNA...

The JMB years. (News).(recollections of scientist Sydney Brenner as an editor at the Journal of Molecular Biology)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... When I first started working with Sydney Brenner as a young postdoc in the late 1970s, he was, in addition to being the director of the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology, the editor in chief of the prestigious Journal...

The worm--Caenorhabditis elegans. (News).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... In the dozen years from 1965 onward, Sydney Brenner laid the groundwork for making Caenorhabditis elegans a major system for genetics, neurobiology, and developmental biology research. As a direct result of his original vision, this tiny...

Singapore and Fugu. (News).(Japanese puffer fish, recollection of scientist Sydney Brenner)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... I met Sydney Brenner for the second time in Singapore at a biotech conference in 1983. I had first met him 10 years earlier when he reviewed my proposal for an Interferon Institute that I had been invited to set up in the Memorial...

MSI and lessons from the past. (News).(Molecular Sciences Institute)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... I first met Sydney in the 1970s, when the Earth was still young, and the number of molecular biologists small, but our paths only crossed decisively in the mid-1990s. At the time, I was trying to think through where biology, functional...

Pufferfish genomes probe human genes; a compact version of humans genetically, pufferfish illuminate evolution. (News).
March 18, 2002... It may be humbling to think that humans have much in common with pufferfish, but at the genome level, the two are practically kissing cousins. "In terms of gene complement, we are at least 90% similar--probably higher. There are big...

Big genes are back; recent "evo-devo" findings revive the large-effect gene hypothesis. (News).
March 18, 2002... One more genomewide linkage map, this for a fish called the three-spined stickleback, was announced late last year to not much fanfare. (1) But rather than just another stride in the march of genomics, the accomplishment heralded a new way to...

Bioterrorism projects boost US research budget; with largest-ever single-year boost, NIH wants to increase number and size of grants. (News).
March 18, 2002... For the US government's fiscal year 2003, which begins Oct. 1 this year, President George W. Bush has requested a budget of $27.3 billion for the National Institutes of Health, a 15.7% increase of $3.7 billion, the largest single-year boost...

Linking up with LinkOut: NCBI expands access to outside Internet sites. (News).(National Center for Biotechnology Information)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... The US National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), the repository for protein and gene sequences at the National Library of Medicine, now offers links to Internet sites for users interested in more than just nucleotides, amino...

Closing in on the malaria genome: researchers hope results will eventually lead to vaccines. (News).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Researchers have practically finished sequencing the most deadly form of the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. The project, started in 1996, will publish on its current standing late this summer, says Malcolm Gardner, associate...

Prion-disease trials on the horizon? Prusiner reports on progress of research. (News).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... The discoverer of prions, the pathogens implicated in the fatal, brain-wasting mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), announced recently that a therapy against them would likely be...

The inequality of drug metabolism: the same medicines, same dosage, often have different outcomes for men and women. (Research).
March 18, 2002... More than 30 years ago, researchers noted for the first time the pharmacokinetic differences between men and women. They found that women pass antipyrine, a drug used to study liver metabolism, more quickly than men; this occurred around...

The goal: control blood vessel development: by halting or increasing angiogenesis, researchers look to change cancer and heart disease from acute lethal illnesses into chronic manageable diseases. (Research).
March 18, 2002... Managing blood vessel development by preventing its growth from tumors in cancer patients or stimulating its development in cardiac disease patients is apparently an idea whose time has come. William Li, president and medical director of the...

Common denominators. (In Focus).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Considered the father of angiogenesis, Judah Folkman first recognized its importance in tumor growth. Folkman, professor of pediatric surgery and cell biology at Children's Hospital in Boston, has studied angiogenesis since the field's...

Learning from angiogenesis trial failures: disappointment collides with optimism. (Research).
March 18, 2002... Although targeting angiogenesis is a promising anticancer approach, the recent spate of Phase III trial failures has bashed some scientists' hopes for success. According to industry insiders, however, the 12 recent failures involving five...

The rise of biological databases: once clunky, these now indispensable repositories provide a wealth of information to researchers. (Hot Papers).
March 18, 2002... The genomics revolution and the Internet have changed science in ways impossible to imagine 20 years ago. Among other advances, these forces have allowed the latest research to be routinely gathered, organized, and disseminated, typically at...

Murine gene therapy corrects symptoms of sickle cell disease; early results indicate that human trials are not far off. (Faculty of 1000).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Caused by a simple gene mutation that misshapes red blood cells and renders them ineffective, sickle cell disease (SCD) seemed to provide scientists with a straightforward target for gene therapy. But since the first SCD gene therapy...

Gene knockouts. (Faculty of 1000).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... M. Gray, S.M. Honigberg, "Effect of chromosomal locus, GC content and length of homology on PCR-mediated targeted gene replacement in Saccharomyces," Nucleic Acids Research, 29:5156-62, Dec. 15, 2001. F1000 Rating: Recommended ...

Genomes & genomics. (Faculty of 1000).
March 18, 2002... R. Tompa et al., "Genome-wide profiling of DNA methylation reveals transposon targets of CHROMOMETHYLASE3," Current Biology, 12:65-8, Jan. 8, 2002. F1000 Rating: Recommended "A new technique can be used to monitor cytosine...

Bioinformatics. (Faculty of 1000).(Bibliography)
March 18, 2002... J. Gough, C. Chothia, "SUPERFAMILY: HMMs representing all proteins of known structure. SCOP sequence searches, alignments and genome assignments," Nucleic Acids Research, 30:268-72, Jan. 1, 2002. F1000 Rating: Must Read "Gough and...

Virology. (Faculty of 1000).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... G. Kochs et al., "Self-assembly of human MxA GTPase into highly-ordered dynamin-like oligomers," Journal of Biological Chemistry, Published online, Feb. 14, 2002 [10.1074/jbc.M200244200] F1000 Rating: Recommended "The mode of...

Combinatorial chemistry. (Faculty of 1000).
March 18, 2002... J. Goldberg et al., "Erythropoietin mimetics derived from solution phase combinatorial libraries," Journal of the American Chemical Society, 124:544-55, Jan. 30, 2002. F1000 Rating: Recommended Recombinant erythropoietin (EPO), a...

Protein engineering. (Faculty of 1000).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... J.M. Zhou et al., "A novel strategy by the action of ricin that connects phenotype and genotype without loss of the diversity of libraries, "Journal of the American Chemical Society, 124:538-43, Jan. 30, 2002. F1000 Rating: Recommended...

Bridging the gap with bioelectronics: molecular biology and electronics unite in hybrid biosensors. (Lab Consumer).
March 18, 2002... Science has entered a new era in which molecules are being used as building blocks, moving parts, and even as electronic components. Biomolecules offer great potential as component parts because nature has already done much of the work; their...

The core of DNA sequencing: thanks to centralized core facilities, "drive-through" convenience has replaced the grueling days of manual sequencing. (Lab Consumer).
March 18, 2002... Before waxing nostalgic about the "good old days," remember: They weren't always good. Take, for example, the task of DNA sequencing. Years ago, sequencing was a laborious day-long affair of performing reactions, pouring and running gels, and...

Bacteria have mRNA too: long-suffering bacteriologists can now isolate mRNA from their model organisms. (Tools & Technology).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Until recently, scientists were largely limited in their choice of mRNA sources. For decades it was possible to isolate mRNA from eukaryotic samples, such as animal and plant cells, but it was virtually impossible to isolate bacterial mRNA....

Looking for patterns in drug screening: ASL's new chip for drug candidate screening employs an array of fluorescently labeled, engineered proteins. (Lab Consumer).(Adaptive Screening Ltd.)
March 18, 2002... Founded in July 2001, Adaptive Screening Ltd. (ASL) of Cambridge, UK, is developing several miniaturized drug-profiling platforms. "Advances in high-throughput technologies coupled with the `genomics explosion' have transferred the...

It doesn't stink. (Bench Buys).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Most reagents used for reducing disulfide bonds in peptides and proteins have unpleasant odors. To combat this problem, Pierce Chemical Co. of Rockford, Ill., has covalently attached the odorless reducing agent TCEP to an agarose support....

A colorful solution. (Bench Buys).(immunoprecipitation experiments)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... St. Louis-based Sigma-Aldrich has developed the EZview[TM] line of affinity beads for use in immunoprecipitation experiments. EZview resins are composed of red-colored agarose beads that increase the visibility of pellets, helping users avoid...

Mastercycler promo. (Bench Buys).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Until June 30, 2002, Westbury, NY-based Brinkmann Instruments Inc., is offering a 25% discount on the purchase of two Eppendorf Mastercycler 384 thermal cyclers--a savings of $4,418 off the list price. The Mastercycler 384 is designed for...

The guide.(Bibliography)
March 18, 2002... GLASS BOTTOM DISHES INTRODUCTORY PRICES WPI's new series of optical quality glass bottom dishes (with lids) provide exceptional imaging clarity. Available in two sizes (35mm and 55mm diameters) with a choice of five different glass...

Training wheels: postdoc grants: funding can help trainees work independently and boost their careers. (Profession).
March 18, 2002... When Chris Hurst moved to Boston to take a postdoctoral research training position at Boston University, he looked at it as his first real job. After four years in graduate school getting his PhD in toxicology, Hurst yearned to do his own...

Wessely's war: British scientist attracts international government funding by blending epidemiology, psychiatry, and history into study of Gulf War syndrome. (Profession).
March 18, 2002... Of all the job titles Simon Wessely thought he might hold in his life, researcher ranked among the least likely. He wanted to be a physician. "I certainly didn't see myself in a laboratory," Wessely says. So the Sheffield, England native...

Stanching the British brain drain. (Fine Tuning).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... One-quarter of the 200-plus UK science organizations surveyed in a recent Science Recruitment Group (SRG) study agreed that a skills shortage affects most science disciplines. UK researchers have been leaving the country for better-paid...

Funding flows for stem cell research: despite controversy, governments plan to finance projects focused on human embryonic stem cells. (Profession).
March 18, 2002... The American Red Cross, the first organization to receive a human embryonic stem cell (HESC) research grant in from the US government, surprised the scientific community by rejecting the money, fanning the international policy debate over the...

Matthew Meselson: scientist and world statesman. (Profile).(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Matthew S. Meselson waited quietly in the car while female associates handled the delicate work of questioning families of people who had died of anthrax. The scientist had charmed, wrangled, and nagged politicians on two continents from 1979...

Caught in the act: researchers capture membrane fusion on film. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... The movie begins with three compartments, or vacuoles, docked like nanometer-sized flying saucers inside a yeast cell. The boundary membranes, which look like interior walls, are where the three vacuoles meet. Suddenly, they break loose,...

Watson waxes philosophical: bioethicist tries to draw the DNA guru `out of his shell'. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... The inimitable James Dewey Watson stopped recently in Philadelphia while touting his new book, Genes, Girls and Gamow: After the Double Helix (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002). Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's...

Researchers mine mouse for olfactory receptor genes: now with most of them identified, it's time to clone. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... In a labor-intensive task that required combing the Celera Genomics Group mouse genome multiple times, researchers at Columbia University identified more than 95% of the olfactory receptor (OR) genes, the largest gene superfamily in...

Planting a virtual world: UK hopes new knowledge parks encourage collaboration among investigators. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... British scientists hope that six virtual Genetic Knowledge Parks will encourage collaboration among academic institutions in six UK cities and regions. Researchers foresee conducting joint investigations and public education programs in...

More dollars for molecule design: Keck funds a third chemical genomics grant. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... The W.M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles recently awarded $1.8 million (US) to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to create the W.M. Keck Center for Rational Design of Biologically Active Molecules. This is the group's third...

Transcription factors could get redacted: scientists look to rewrite a chapter in molecular biology textbooks. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... To the chagrin of many cash-poor students, the profitable reselling of their molecular biology textbooks may not be an option this year. Rockefeller University researchers James Darnell and Ali Brivanlou are proposing an ambitious...

ATP and the valley of death. (Commentary).(Advanced Technology Program)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... Traveling the road from basic research to marketable product takes a vehicle that can make many turns, twists, dips, and climbs, much of which takes place in the valley of death. That's the period during which a technology or product of...

Not-So-Intelligent Design. (Opinion).
March 4, 2002... Some members of the Ohio State Board of Education are maneuvering to have "intelligent design" (ID) taught to Ohio students as an alternative to teaching them about biological evolution. (1) These board members were pursuing the inclusion of...

Consider practical aspects. (Letters).
March 4, 2002... I would like to bring the following aspects into the discussion on deoxygenating ballast water. (1) There is a vast difference between real circumstances in ballast tanks and a laboratory circumstance--much bigger difference than usual...

Concentrate on earth. (Letters).
March 4, 2002... I can understand that a scientist wants to proceed with all kinds of tests and missions, (1) but the truth of the matter is that there is nothing out there [in space] that we know of that is of much value. Sure we can point to the global...

Hold off on Mars. (Letters).
March 4, 2002... The vision of the International Space Station (1) has become a fiasco because of the needless vision that helped create it. It was literally a Star Trek-inspired capital sink, and manned Mars missions will be no better, because there's no...

Today's lab: kits, cores, and computers have transformed laboratories and laboratory practices. (Cover Story).
March 4, 2002... Tom Sargent remembers the day a student in his lab forgot to add boiling chips to phenol before firing up the heater on the distillation apparatus, and the panicked shouting and tearing off of the lab coat, goggles, gloves, and shoes that...

Interdisciplinary research gets formal: casual chats in the hallway turn into collaborative efforts in the lab. (News).
March 4, 2002... The year was 1987 and Bill Mahaney was doing what he does; playing in the dirt. Mahaney, a geology professor at York University in Toronto, was standing on a mountain in Rwanda with primatologist David Watts, observing some very hairy miners....

AAAS topics span broad range: annual meeting brings together experts and science journalists. (News).
March 4, 2002... This year's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science attracted about 6,400 scientists, science journalists, and others to Boston Feb. 14-19. Topics of discussion ranged from bioterrorism to dinosaurs to ice...

Renewing the fight against bacteria: scientists are trying to re-harness the power of antibiotics. (News).
March 4, 2002... In the 1940s, the mass production of penicillin led to a sensational reduction in illness and death from bacterial disease. A resulting golden era of bacterial research emerged with new classes of antibiotics, and by 1969, US Surgeon General...

Retracing steps to find new antibiotics: antimicrobial peptides are just one avenue being explored to fight drug-resistant infections. (Research).
March 4, 2002... When linezolid (Zyvox) received federal approval in early 2000, it was the first completely new antibiotic compound to reach the pharmaceutical market in 35 years. The synthetic compound even proved effective against methicillin-resistant...

Bacteriophages: the comeback kids. (In Focus).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... In an era of "superbugs" that resist some of the most powerful antibiotics available, scientists are searching for new approaches to kill bacteria. A team of researchers at Rockefeller University in New York City has discovered a highly...

Using transgenesis to create salt-tolerant plants: the hope is to grow crops where none could thrive before. (Research).
March 4, 2002... Crop agriculture has succeeded because growers have identified and cultivated useful plant variants through selective breeding and environmental alterations. Transgenic technology improves the precision of agriculture, modifying crops in ways...

The delicate balancing act: discovery of elusive osteoprotegerin leads to other players in bone adsorption regulation. (Hot Papers).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... Osteoblasts and osteoclasts do a delicate dance to keep bone formation and bone resorption, respectively, in balance. Upset this equilibrium, and at one extreme, osteoporosis develops, a common malady that decreases bone mass, while at the...

IAP: antagonizing the antagonist: two different routes find the mammalian enemies of apoptosis inhibitors. (Hot Papers).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, provides organisms a way to remove unwanted cells, such as during morphogenesis, or to defend against viral infection. Of course, certain molecules exist to prohibit apoptosis. One of these proteins, aptly...

TAPping the power of proteomics: scientists study the integration of cellular components. (Faculty of 1000).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... Most laboratory work is, by necessity, reductionist. A minute aspect of an organism, isolated from its contextual surroundings, is examined in excruciating detail, and the knowledge gained is pieced together with similar studies to gain a...

Proteomics. (Faculty of 1000).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... J.S. Andersen et al., "Directed proteomic analysis of the human nucleolus," Current Biology, 12:1-11, Jan. 8, 2002. F1000 Recommendation: Must Read "This is a good paper showing the large scale analysis of a very large protein...

Molecular medicine. (Faculty of 1000).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... W.K. Scott et al., "Complete genomic screen in Parkinson disease: Evidence for multiple genes," Journal of the American Medical Association, 286:2239-44, Nov. 14, 2001. F1000 Recommendation: Must Read "I think this is an interesting,...

Structural biology. (Faculty of 1000).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... Y.G. Choi et al., "tRNA elements mediate the assembly of an icosahedral RNA virus," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 99:655-60, Jan. 22, 2002. F1000 Recommendation: Recommended "This study reveals a novel...

Transcription & translation. (Faculty of 1000).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... S.W. Stevens et al., "Composition and functional characterization of the yeast spliceosomal penta-snRNP," Molecular Cell, 9:31-44, January 2002. F1000 Recommendation: Exceptional "Stevens et al. provide evidence that the core components...

Biochemistry. (Faculty of 1000).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... K. Morino et al., "Antibody fusions with fluorescent proteins: A versatile reagent for profiling protein expression," Journal of Immunological Methods, 257:175-84, Nov. 1, 2001. F1000 Recommendation: Recommended "The paper describes...

Phylogenetics. (Faculty of 1000).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... R. Breitling et al., "Structure-based phylogenetic analysis of short-chain alcohol dehydrogenases and reclassification of the 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase family," Molecular Biology and Evolution, 18:2154-61, 2001. F1000...

Bioinformatics. (Faculty of 1000).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... B.P. Berman et al., "Exploiting transcription factor binding site clustering to identify cisregulatory modules involved in pattern formation in the Drosophila genome," PNAS, 99:757-62, Jan. 22, 2002. M. Markstein et al., "Genome-wide...

Nanotech dreams: increased federal spending, new technologies, and savvy researchers combine to harness the power of thinking small. (Lab Consumer).
March 4, 2002... Nanotechnology hit the big time in July 1995, when it debuted on the television show, The Outer Limits. In an episode entitled "The New Breed," a scientist develops nanorobots capable of repairing damaged cells and correcting physical...

Better living through toxicogenomics? Gene expression profiling on "tox chips" could speed toxicity analyses, streamline drug development, and increase consumer safety. (Lab Consumer).
March 4, 2002... Toxicologists traditionally use animals to test the toxicity of chemicals and other substances. But the brand new field of toxicogenomics, which applies a whole-genome approach to toxicology questions, is changing all that. Still in its...

21st century antibiotics: synthetic cyclic peptides offer promise as new antibiotics. (Tech link: the technology behind the research).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... Three decades ago, it was widely believed that antibiotics had conquered bacteria. But as antibiotic-resistant bacteria have proliferated, pharmaceutical companies have searched for a broad-spectrum drug that could kill them quickly and...

Arraying the genome: Affymetrix's GeneChip Human Genome U133 set offers scientists the most up-to-date microarray version of the human genome yet. (Tools & Technology).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... Santa Clara, Calif.-based Affymetrix's new GeneChip[R] Human Genome U133 set is the first commercially available microarray set designed using the April 2001 draft of the human genome. Affymetrix incorporated 2.7 million source sequences in...

Chemiluminescent collaboration: Pierce and Ambion team up to improve the RPA. (Lab Consumer).(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... Researchers looking for highly sensitive RNA quantitation and the ability to multiplex often turn to the ribonuclease protection assay (RPA). In an RPA, the RNA sample is incubated with labeled RNA probes complementary to specific target...