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Genetically selected medicine has been much hyped but has significant potential. Regulation and treatment will depend on pharmaceutical companies more readily sharing genetic data.
A new effort to map human genetic variation should provide a shortcut for researchers trying to uncover the roots of disease. Carina Dennis profiles the 'HapMap' project.
Truly 'personalized' medicine remains a distant goal. But researchers are now thinking about how to use genomic data to avoid prescribing drugs that may kill, or won't work. Alison Abbott reports.
Vera Rubin, senior fellow in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, is wife, parent and astronomer, in that order. She and husband Bob have four PhD offspring: two geologists, an astronomer and a mathematician.
The finished sequence of human chromosome 6 reveals an abundance of biological information previously buried within the draft of the human genome, and illustrates the increasing power of comparative genomics.
Astronomers crave a detector sensitive enough to detect a single photon and determine its energy. A new single-pixel device can do this, and could also be built up into a large array suitable for a telescope.
The microenvironment, or niche, in which stem cells reside controls their renewal and maturation. The niche that regulates blood-forming stem cells in adult animals has eluded researchers — until now.
Warm-blooded animals of the same species, living in different climates, have different metabolic rates. In birds, this variation is not only due to physiological adaptation — it is inherent in the animals' genes.
The genetics of development can often explain the genesis of cancer. This now seems to be true for cancers of the gut, but the patterns of gene expression in these tumours tell a tale with a twist.
Recovering the true evolutionary history of any group of organisms has seemed impossible. The availability of large amounts of genomic data promises an era in which the uncertainties are better constrained.
Peering down an eyepiece is becoming a thing of the past. Tim Chapman takes a look into the digital world of a new generation of microscopes and imaging systems.
Rapidly changing technology and an abundance of DNA sequences are creating more job opportunities in functional genomics — particularly for scientists who have been trained outside traditional biology. Hannah Hoag investigates.
The costs of functional genomics can be prohibitive, and job candidates often lack the skills most researchers desire, but many academic settings are creating training schemes and unique institutes to deal with these barriers. Hannah Hoag reports.