The Scientist

Oct

2010

Biotech on the Bayou

The Scientist magazine, October 2010.

Running from patient to patient while fielding calls from reporters, investors, biotech CEOs, and medical engineers, William Kethman isn’t your typical medical student. The calls are coming because of his second job: moonlighting as a medical device and biotech inventor in the thick of New Orleans’s burgeoning biotechnology economy.

With a jumpstart from Tulane University’s bioengineering innovation course, which teaches students how to shape their ideas into medical devices that can make a difference, Kethman and his partners have turned their undergraduate school project—an improved umbilical clamp they call the SafeSnip—into a brand new biotech medical devices company, known as NOvate Medical Technologies. Read More >

Oct

2010

The One True Path?

The Scientist magazine, October 2010.

Endocrinologist Kevin Niswender and neuroscientist Aurelio Galli hadn’t really kept in contact since they parted ways after beginning their respective careers at Vanderbilt University in the 1990s. But about 10 years ago, Niswender, who went to medical school at Vanderbilt, and Galli, who did a postdoc there, both landed faculty positions back at the Nashville, Tennessee, university. They rekindled their friendship and often discussed their research during convivial family dinners.

Niswender, who studies diabetes and metabolism, and Galli, who specializes in the neurobiology of addiction, had never collaborated scientifically. They can’t remember the exact moment they decided to do so, but gradually they realized that some of their research interests overlapped. The pair discussed a number of clinical hints that diabetes and mood disorders are related: Defects of the insulin pathway run in families with schizophrenia, diabetics are more likely to be depressed, and insulin signaling somehow affects dopamine levels in the brain. Read More >

Oct

2010

Dr. James’s Fever Powder, circa 1746

The Scientist magazine, October 2010.

Dr. James’s fever powder, patented by English physician Robert James, claimed to cure fevers and various other maladies, from gout and scurvy to distemper in cattle. Though its efficacy was often questioned, the powder had “a long tradition of usage,” from its introduction in 1746 well into the 20th century, says John Crellin, a professor of medical humanities at Memorial University of Newfoundland. It was even prescribed to King George III when he was suffering from cataracts, rheumatism and dementia at the end of his life. Read More >

Oct

2010

Shivering Shavenbaby

The Scientist magazine, October 2010.

The paper

N. Frankel et al., “Phenotypic robustness conferred by apparently redundant transcriptional enhancers,” Nature, 466:490-93, 2010.

The finding

Are redundant copies of noncoding DNA sequences due to poor genomic housekeeping, or do they function to improve the organism’s chances of survival? David Stern at Princeton University and colleagues attacked this question by looking at duplicate or “shadow” versions of enhancers, noncoding regions that regulate and promote gene expression. Read More >

Oct

2010

Ekaterina Heldwein: Crystallizing killers

The Scientist magazine, October 2010.

Structural virologist Ekaterina Heldwein, who goes by Katya, has followed a less-than-direct path to success in science. As a Russian chemistry undergraduate with a desire to live abroad but little money, she headed to the biochemistry graduate program at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) in 1994. But she had to find it first.

“I was only worried she could find Portland,” said her graduate advisor, OHSU structural biologist Richard Brennan. While planning her trip, Heldwein had accidently bought a ticket to Portland, Maine, and didn’t notice her mistake until right before she boarded the plane in New York. Read More >

Sep

2010

Video: Fast plants

The Scientist, September 9 2010.

Marvels of evolution and adaptation, plants and fungi have developed myriad methods of spreading their seeds or spores. Some of these dispersal events happen with blinding speed, and researchers are exploring these dramatic behaviors in the world’s fastest plants and fungi using ultra-high speed video cameras. Feast your eyes on our smorgasbord of fast-moving, spore-shooting, seed-spreading organisms. Read More >

Sep

2010

Insulin regulates translation

The Scientist, September 6, 2010.

By controlling how many ribosomes coat a certain mRNA in C. elegans, intracellular insulin signaling can regulate how many copies of a protein are made, and how quickly, giving cells more flexibility when responding to changes in the environment.

The results, published, in the September 8th issue of Cell Metabolism, hold implications for a range of fields, including aging and diabetes, in which insulin signaling is known to play a role. “We have found a new way in which insulin controls the proteins that are made, and some of those proteins are really important for the survival of the worms,” said lead author Gordon Lithgow, of the Buck Institute for Age Research. “That throws up questions as to whether insulin is doing the same in humans and that presents a whole new set of targets for potential therapies or interventions in both aging and diabetes.” Read More >

Sep

2010

Bright moves

The Scientist (print), September 2010.

The paper

X. Wang, et al., “Light-mediated activation reveals a key role for Rac in collective guidance of cell movement in vivo,” Nature Cell Biology, 12:591–98, 2010.

The finding

When Denise Montell and her team at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine engineered an actin cytoskeleton-regulating protein to be light sensitive, they discovered it could also control cellular movement in vivo. Read More >

Sep

2010

Shaping Your Postdocs

The Scientist (print), September 2010.

In 1990, fresh out of his first postdoc, David Woodland walked into his very own lab at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. All he wanted was to dive into the viral immunology that he had spent years thinking about, but found that a lot of his time was consumed by the other tasks that come with being a principal investigator (PI).

“It was difficult,” he says. “No one had given me guidance in writing grants, or [told me] that I would principally be in a management position.” Twenty years later, he uses his experience to help guide the postdocs at the Trudeau Institute, where he is the director. Read More >

Sep

2010

Surprise breast cancer source

The Scientist, September 1 2010.

Some breast cancer tumors may not originate from stem cells as previously believed, according to a study published in the September 3rd issue of Cell Stem Cell. The discovery is an important step in the development of treatments for these cancers.

“Understanding the origins of these types of breast cancer is not only critical for developing preventative strategies against the disease but also for developing new targeted therapies,” said Matthew Smalley, a mammary cell biologist at the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Centre in London and lead author on the study. Read More >