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Confronted by religious and political opposition, proponents of embryonic-stem-cell research need to draw attention not only to new therapies but also to the understanding of diseases that they could soon yield.
Sequencing the DNA of the world's leading food crop was the easy part. Now comes the tricky task of turning our new knowledge of the rice genome into agricultural and economic gains. David Cyranoski reports.
The physics lab that gave us the World Wide Web is now gearing up to make the first practical deployment of the Internet's next big thing: the Grid. Declan Butler takes a test drive.
The filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa is an organism much loved by geneticists. Its genome sequence has now been unveiled, and includes some surprises — such as the relatively high number of genes.
Temperature is an awkward concept for a single particle, but the energy of the particle's 'quivering' is a useful substitute. Feedback control of this motion can be used to cool a single electron to very low temperature.
It remains uncertain how tissue-specific stem cells could generate the mature cell types of another tissue. In one instance, where bone-marrow-derived stem cells repair damaged liver in mice, cell fusion is the answer.
HE0107–5240 is a star in more than one sense of the word. Chemically, it is the most primitive object yet discovered, and it is at the centre of debate about the origins of the first elements in the Universe.
Mutations in the Abl protein cause some leukaemias. The determination of its structure and the identification of Abl variants resistant to an anti-leukaemia drug reveal regions of the protein needed for its regulation.
Complex political, ethical and legal issues surround research on human embryonic stem cells. Diane Gershon explores the field's long-term career prospects.