Almost 150 different genomes have been sequenced to date, including the human genome. But sequencing needs are growing faster than ever: In March 2003, the Bush administration announced it will spend $1 billion over five years to increase forensic analysis of DNA, including a backlog of up to 300,000 samples. And the success of the growing field of genomic medicine, which promises to deliver better therapies and diagnostics, depends on faster sequencing technology.

This fall, researchers at

A recent Purdue University study has uncovered the processes responsible for shutting down scent production in certain flowers once they’ve been pollinated – a finding that may help the horticulture industry enhance floral scent.

Natalia Dudareva, associate professor of horticulture, and her colleagues have recently identified the molecular mechanisms that cause petunias and snapdragons to decrease scent production after they’ve been visited by pollinators such as bees or moths. Th

Researchers have discovered that a specific type of calcium channel — a pore-like protein that nestles in the cell membrane and controls the flow of calcium into the cell — regulates the relaxation of coronary arteries.

The studies showed that mice engineered to lack these calcium channels had constricted coronary arteries and had fibrous tissue in their hearts, which was evident when the animals’ hearts reacted to chronic blood restriction. The researchers hypothesize that drugs tar

Scientists at the Emory Vaccine Center and The Scripps Research Institute have found a way to identify which of the T cells generated after a viral infection can persist and confer protective immunity. Because these long-lived cells protect against reinfection by “remembering” the prior pathogen, they are called memory T cells. This discovery about the specific mechanisms of long-term immunity could help scientists develop more effective vaccines against challenging infections.

The research

Protein discovery in Chlamydomonas

A new protein discovery sheds light on how chemical information is transported within cells. A group of researchers, which includes Dartmouth Professor of Biological Sciences Roger Sloboda, have found the protein EB1 in Chlamydomonas, a single-celled organism commonly used to study cell biology. Previous research has implicated EB1 in the progression of many colon cancers.

Published in the November 11 edition of the journal Current Biology,

A research team at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center has found that a single protein known as ARF helps coordinate both growth and division within a cell — the functions that are often perturbed in cancer development.

Many proteins have been found in cancer research that are associated with either errant cell division or with uncontrolled growth, but ARF is the first “master molecule” that seems to be involved in both crucial aspects of the cell cycle, say the researcher

Chemists at the University of Toronto have captured atom-scale images of the melting process-revealing the first images of the transition of a solid into a liquid at the timescale of femtoseconds, or millionths of a billionth of a second.

The result is an unprecedented “movie” detailing the melting process as solid aluminum becomes a liquid. This new study, led by Professor R. J. Dwayne Miller of the Departments of Chemistry and Physics, received the prestigious cover position of the Nov.

The explosion of “junk” DNA in animals, plants and fungi may be the simple result of their ancestors’ reduced population sizes, according to a new hypothesis proposed by Indiana University Bloomington and University of Oregon scientists in the Nov. 21 issue of Science.

The hypothesis explains a mysterious genetic difference between bacteria and eukaryotes, a giant group of organisms that includes animals, plants, fungi, algae and other protists. Bacteria tend to have extremely lean gen

Avoiding the sun is not the best strategy for reducing overall rates of cancer, claims a senior doctor in a letter to this week’s BMJ. Recommending moderate exposure to the sun would be more prudent.

Sun exposure is the main source of vitamin D, which reduces the risk of colon, breast, prostate, and other cancers, writes Professor Cedric Garland at the University of California.

People in the United Kingdom cannot synthesise vitamin D from November to March, so become deficient

Results of a US study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET provide details of the underlying physical causes of attention-deficit hyperactivity syndrome, with reductions in size of some brain areas and an increase in grey matter proportions being characteristic of children with the disorder.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a serious neuropsychiatric problem in schoolchildren (an estimated 3-6% of US schoolchildren are affected, for example). The disorder is characterise

A technique that combines high-level magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with a new spectroscopic method may result in an accurate, non-invasive way to make breast cancer diagnoses. In this technique, MRI is used to detect breast lumps, while spectroscopy measures molecules known to accumulate in cancer cells.

According to a study in the Nov. 21 online version of the journal Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, researchers at The Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota have developed a magneti

People who take a commonly prescribed yet problematic drug called Coumadin to prevent stroke or blood clots may soon have a hassle-free alternative, according to research at Stanford University School of Medicine. Results from a 7,329-person international study have found that a new drug called ximelegatran prevents strokes as effectively as Coumadin without the side effects or inconvenience.

“We think this will result in a huge shift in anti-coagulation therapy,” said Gregory Albers, MD, p

Findings may lead to new drug targets for treating schizophrenia

A mouse study reported in this week’s Science magazine shows that three drugs, each acting on a different chemical transmitter in the brain, all produce the same schizophrenia-like symptoms by acting on a single “master molecule” in the brain.
The findings, reported by researchers at Rockefeller University with collaboration from three pharmaceutical and biotech companies, provides, for the first time, a cellul

A study led by scientists at The Wistar Institute defines a functional role for the tumor suppressor proteins BRCA1 and BRCA2 in breast cancer. The findings, presented in November issue of the journal Molecular Cell, also identify a number of novel proteins that work alongside BRCA1 and BRCA2 and might also play a part in breast cancer. These proteins offer an important set of new targets for possible anti-cancer drugs.

The link between the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and hereditary breast cancer

For decades, doctors have known that patients who develop higher than normal blood sugar eventually require medication and ultimately need to take insulin, having progressed to what is known as Type 2, or adult-onset diabetes. So when a natural protein analog known as GLP-1 was found to lower blood sugar levels in laboratory mice, researchers began investigating its effectiveness in diabetes patients in clinical trials. Once again, they found that GLP-1 lowered blood sugar and increased insulin produ

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have shown that insulin family signaling is important for male sex determination, a discovery that furthers the understanding of testes formation and eventually could lead to treatments for reproductive disorders.

Their findings appear in the current issue of Nature and are available online.

“We are excited by this research for two reasons,” said Dr. Luis Parada, senior author of the Nature study and director of the Center fo