News & Views in 2007

A fungus engineered to express a scorpion toxin may prove useful in combating insect pests.

The properties of the different IgG isotypes should be considered in developing therapeutic antibodies.

RNA interference induced in insects after ingestion of plant-expressed hairpin RNA offers promise for managing devastating crop pests.

A new design for bispecific antibodies enables efficient production of stable molecules with good pharmacodynamic properties.

Photoswitchable fluorescent labels allow simultaneous optical imaging of multiple target complexes inside fixed cells with nanometer spatial resolution.

Network biology illuminates our understanding of drug action.

Chromosomal integration of rAAV vectors may induce hepatocellular carcinoma in neonatally treated mice.

Prediction of a protein's affinity for a ligand has been improved through fundamental physical modeling.

Cellular targets of kinase inhibitors are identified by mass spectrometric analysis of binding to “kinobeads.”

microRNA expression has been profiled in a broad range of cell types.

Cardiomyocytes derived from human embryonic stem cells prove beneficial in an animal model of myocardial infarction.

Peptides only 28 amino acids long retain the specificity of a parental antibody.

Three recent papers on the reprogramming of somatic cells herald a revolution in stem cell biology.

Evolved polymerases improve the recovery of ancient DNA.

The nutritional quality of maize and soybean seeds is improved by embryo-specific silencing of an ABC transporter.