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Volume 19, Number 16
15 August 2000

pp 4193-4422

Cover. Fluke of a Southern Right Whale. This photograph was taken by Freddy Frischknecht off the South African coast from a small research boat. Note the missing triangle that was most likely bitten out by a passing shark. Freddy joined whale researcher Peter Best for 2 weeks to help collect skin biopsies from the Southern Right. An article about this research has been published by Freddy in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung (4 July 2000). After being hunted to almost complete extinction, Southern Right Whales are increasing in numbers, unlike their cousin, the Northern Right Whale, which is the most endangered of whales. Freddy has just finished his PhD at EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany, working on the actin tail formation of vaccinia virus, and will move to a post-doctoral position at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. While the (actin-containing) tail of the pictured whale is a good 4 m wide, vaccinia actin tails are a bare 10mumlong.

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