Friday,
15 December 2000
A disastrous case of cleavage [PDF]
The way that brain cells choose to cut a protein may be the key to Alzheimer's disease. In 1907 the German physician Alois
Alzheimer was the first to recognize a baffling
pattern in a number of patients suffering from
progressive behavioral and psychological disorders.
Autopsies of the patients revealed consistent
types of neurological damage, and
Alzheimer published an article describing the
disease which now bears his name. The disease
had probably gone unnoticed due to the
chaotic nature of the symptoms, to the fact
that it develops late in life – well beyond the
average life expectancy a century ago – and
undoubtedly due to the way society dealt
with mental illness at the time.
Thursday, 31 August 2000
Chasing a bouncing barrel across the landscape of evolution [PDF]
Two EMBL groups close gaps in the family history of the most widespread protein structure.
The French biologist Jacques Monod once said that
the aim of molecular biology is to interpret the
fundamentals of life based on the structures of
molecules. The structure, activities, and development
of cells and organisms can ultimately be traced
to interactions between molecules such as proteins,
RNA, and DNA – which in turn depend on their
chemical and physical architecture. Shape is essential
to a molecule's function in the cell – the
way it folds creates surfaces which are precisely
configured to interact with other molecules. But
while DNA has a simple, elegant, double-helix structure,
proteins – the cell's workhorses – don't fold
into forms that reflect this clarity of design.
Wednesday, 26 July 2000
Of sugars and fly wings [PDF]
By
explaining the activity of a molecule important in the development
of fly wings, EMBL
researchers may have discovered a general principle of cell communication.
The surface of a cell is an active place. Proteins
that float in the outer membrane play vital roles
in the life of the cell: some collect energy;
others help attach cells to each other. Yet another
type, called a receptor, senses molecular signals
and passes information into the cell.
Thursday, 20 July 2000
Taking the next step with the human genome [PDF]
Wellcome Trust announces major investments in genome bioinformatics.
The Wellcome Trust today announced today that it
will make a major investment of 8.8 million pounds
over 5 years in the Ensembl project, which has been
developed at the Sanger Centre and the European
Bioinformatics Institute [EMBL-EBI - part of the
European Molecular Biology Laboratory] on its Genome
Campus in Hinxton, UK.
Monday, 26 June 2000
Wellcome
Trust announces completion of first draft of Human
Genome
Available at Ensembl [EMBL-EBI Hinxton]Wellcome Trust announces major investments in genome bioinformatics.
"Simultaneously, a great deal of biological information
attached to this DNA sequence is being made publicly
available," says Graham Cameron, Joint Head of the
European Bioinformatics Institute [EBI] in Hinxton,
UK, an Outstation of the European Molecular Biology
Laboratory [EMBL]. Researchers at the EBI and the
neighboring Sanger Centre, one of the world's most
productive sources of sequence information from
the human genome, have been searching for genes
among the vast amout of information encoded in the
complete genome. This has been achieved through
a highly-automated set of analytic tools called
Ensembl.
Wednesday, 21 June 2000
Fighting malaria on a new front [PDF]
New genetic engineering techniques in moquitoes and the discovery of thousands of new mosquito genes will provide a big boost to malaria research.
A research group from the European Molecular Biology
Laboratory [EMBL] in Heidelberg, in collaboration
with teams from London, Greece, and the United States,
has achieved two major watersheds in the fight against
malaria: they have created the first transgenic
mosquito – the first successful implantation
of foreign genes into the insect – and a gene
discovery project has increased the number of known
mosquito genes more than five-fold. When people
think of malaria, their thoughts naturally go to
the vast amount of human suffering caused by this
disease: 500 million people are affected, and there
are nearly three million deaths per year, according
to World Health Organization statistics.
Monday, 26 May 2000
A
gene that puts cells on hold [PDF]
Researchers find a gene that
tells embryonic cells to stop dividing during
critical phases of development.
Embryos and small children have heads and hands
that are large – out of proportion compared
to an adult's body – and many of the body's
organs undergo relative changes in size over the
course of an organism's development. Why don't
heads and hearts and brains keep pace with the
growth of other parts of the body to make adults
into caricatures of children?
Monday, 8 May 2000
Assembling the puzzle of the human genome [PDF]
A collaboration between the Sanger Centre and the EBI
adds critical annotation to sequence data from the Human
Genome Project.
The first sight that greets visitors to the Sanger
Centre in Hinxton [UK], one of the world's most
productive sources of sequence information from
human and other genomes, is a green fluorescent
ticker-tape on which the letters A, C, G, and T
fly by almost too rapidly to be seen. These letters,
representing the four letters of the genetic code,
show an actual flow of data from the Centre's sequencing
machines into the databases of Sanger's next-door
neighbor, the European Bioinformatics Institute
[EBI], which hosts some of the world's largest databases
of genomic information.
Monday, 5 March 2000
Afloat in flatland [PDF]
Researchers make the first direct measurements of mobility on the surfaces of cells and the size of membrane 'rafts'.
This is the way readers are introduced to 'Flatland', a mythical universe conceived
by Edward Abbott at the end of the nineteenth century.
It is also strongly remniscent of the way Heinrich
Hörber, who heads a research group at the European
Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] in Heidelberg,
talks about cell membranes.
Friday, 25 February 2000
DFG Leibniz Prize to Mathias Hentze
Last Friday the Deutsche Forschungs Gemeinschaft
[DFG] announced that a Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Prize, one of its most prestigious research awards
with a value of three million German marks, will
go to Matthias Hentze at the European Molecular
Biology Laboratory [EMBL] in Heidelberg. Hentze
is one of 14 German researchers in the natural or
social sciences to receive the Leibniz Prize for
the year 2000. The prize is given for outstanding
achievements in science, and the funds are given
to support the work of a researcher's group, to
assist in forming collaborations particularly in
the international sphere, and to allow a researcher
to explore ideas which might otherwise lie dormant
because of a lack of funds.
Thursday, 24 February 2000
Finding
the iron ferryman [PDF]
The discovery of a molecule that transports iron
out of cells is an important link in understanding
how the body deals with iron.
All living organisms need iron – in humans
and other mammals, the nutrient is required for
the synthesis of hemoglobin, which transports oxygen
to the body's tissues. Yet an excess of the element
can be harmful or fatal. Hemachromatosis, an 'iron
overload disease', is the most common inherited
disease known in the Western world, affecting nearly
one in every 200 people. |
