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A collage of seven images showing ~1.6 cm of the cervical and thoracic spinal cord of an adult mouse intravenously injected with AAV 9-GF P. Widespread transduction is seen in gray-matter astrocytes but not whitematter astrocytes (labeled with GFA P staining in blue) (p 59).
Mark Roth's pioneering work on hydrogen sulfide has spawned Ikaria, a company exploring the molecule's potential to modulate the body's metabolism and perhaps one day turn hibernation into profitable clinical applications.
Algae have long been touted as a rich and ubiquitous source of renewable fuel but thus far have failed to be economically competitive with other sources of energy. Could new advances change that? Emily Waltz investigates.
The physical properties that determine the propensity of a protein to form a well-ordered crystal suitable for structure determination are poorly understood. An analysis of large-scale crystallization results generated by a structural genomics consortium highlights the importance of low-entropy surface features capable of mediating protein-protein interactions.
Foust et al. describe a viral vector that crosses the blood-brain barrier, providing a non-invasive method for delivering therapeutic genes to the central nervous system. A single intravascular injection of AAV9 results in widespread transduction of astrocytes in adult mice and of astrocytes and neurons in neonatal mice.
Repetitive sequences and chromatin accessibility can confound scoring of chromatin immunoprecipitation data generated by high–throughput sequencing. Using data sets they produce for human RNA polymerase II and the transcription factor STAT1, Rozowsky et al. compensate for these biases by correcting for 'mappability' and normalizing the data against an input–DNA control.
Du et al. describe a bead-based method for high-throughput detection of phosphorylated tyrosine kinases and use it to profile 130 human cancer lines. They show that the tyrosine kinase SRC is frequently activated in glioblastoma cells and that a SRC inhibitor blocks the growth of glioblastoma tumors.
Foudi et al. report a method for monitoring the turnover of hematopoietic stem cells that has several advantages over BrdU labeling. Using drug-inducible expression of a histone 2B–GFP fusion protein, which permits a more sensitive analysis of division history, the authors detect hematopoietic stem cells that cycle at a very slow rate.
Werbowetski-Ogilvie et al. show that cultured human embryonic stem (hES) cells that appear normal may in fact be partially transformed. Two such lines are found to have aberrant growth and differentiation properties and submicroscopic chromosomal abnormalities.
The upward compensation trends reflected in our survey data, collected in the spring of 2008, stand in stark contrast to the economic conditions since October.
