Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
A European high court ruling on the patentability of inventions related to human embryonic stem cells could promote secrecy and reduce access to data and cell lines.
Zafgen hopes that small-molecule targeting of methionine aminopeptidase 2 (MetAP2), an enzyme originally associated with tumor angiogenesis, will lead to a new anti-obesity drug.
Faced with limited funding and the need to find the most time- and cost-efficient route to proof of concept and relevance, how should you reorganize your company to facilitate development of your most valuable assets?
In the past year, biologics sector sales grew by single digits, driven by monoclonal antibodies and insulin products. New product launches are showing mixed results and are facing rising challenges from changes to reimbursement policies.
Agricultural microbes have become an attractive target for patenting, but the lack of a consistent global patent regime and increasingly heated debates over microbial ownership rights are barriers to the development of this resource.
Copy-number changes in cancer genomes may be caused by errors during the replication of colocalized DNA regions. De and Michor provide genome-wide evidence for this model by integrating data on DNA replication timing, the three-dimensional organization of the genome and copy-number alterations in cancer.
Copy-number changes, point mutations and rearrangements are all usually found in cancer genomes, but their relative frequencies are highly variable. Using statistical approaches to model different processes, Fudenberg et al. find that copy number gain and loss is influenced by the three-dimensional organization of the genome in the nucleus.
Creating synthetic biological circuits can be maddeningly difficult because of unpredictable stimuli and unknown variability in the system. Milias-Argeitis et al. circumvent these problems by moving control functions outside the cell—to a computer—and connecting computer and cell through optogenetics.
Mouse induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells have been shown to retain an epigenetic 'memory' of their cell type of origin. Kim et al. study this question in human cells and document both incomplete erasure of methylation and aberrant de novo methylation during reprogramming.
Not all cells in a tumor are alike, but our ability to characterize cancer heterogeneity in detail has been limited. Dalerba et al. use high-throughput single-cell expression analysis to define clinically relevant subpopulations in normal and cancerous colon tissue.
The benefits of crops that produce insecticidal toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) are threatened by the emergence of insect resistance. Working with five major crop pests, Tabashnik et al. show that previously described variant Bt toxins kill pests rendered resistant to native Bt toxins by multiple mechanisms.
The International Stem Cell Initiative compares 125 ethnically diverse human embryonic stem cell lines at early and late passage. Data on karotype, single-nucleotide polymorphisms and methylation shed light on how the cells adapt to long-term culture.
The increasing complexity of medical science poses significant challenges to medical education, leading to a growing gap between medical researchers and treating practitioners.
