News & Views in 2003

Protein and peptide arrays that reveal antigens which induce a diverse autoantibody response can be used to guide tolerizing therapy.

A bacterial protease inhibitor provides a scaffold for the in vitro evolution of specific inhibitors of human serine proteases.

Red blood cells coated with tissue plasminogen activators may help prevent harmful vascular thromboses.

Targeting increased gibberellin turnover to the sites of synthesis in vegetative tissues has resulted in dwarf rice with normal grain production.

A conference in Potsdam, Germany confirms that plant metabolic profiling is moving from an early focus on technology development to one that also addresses trait discovery.

Nanoparticles that combine features of viral and nonviral vectors show promise for targeted gene delivery.

Bone marrow stem cells promote the regeneration of pancreatic β-cells in a mouse model of diabetes mellitus.

Two groups combine zinc fingers with a nuclease to dramatically stimulate homologous recombination and gene targeting in human and insect cells.

Tumor-selective stabilization of RNA is employed as a new approach to engineer viruses that preferentially replicate in cancer cells.

The observation that embryonic stem cells can not only differentiate into oocytes, but also form blastocyst-like structures has provocative implications for basic research and beyond.

A strategy for containment of a dairy bacterium shows promise for facilitating the application of live GM organisms to human therapies.

New strategies for targeting mammalian genes have produced the first knockout rats and a faster way of generating knockout mice.

Two new methods facilitate the profiling of N-glycosylated proteins in complex mixtures.

Turnover of an enzyme is accelerated when the co-reactants are electron vacancies delivered through a gold nanoparticle.

Effective inhibition of hepatitis B virus replication in mice by RNA interference suggests an antiviral treatment strategy.

The completion of the sequence of a second Streptomyces chromosome further establishes these soil-dwelling bacteria as nature's most prolific producers of potentially useful pharmaceuticals.