June 15

Circadian rhythms regulate the expression of all mammalian genes, not just 10–15% of the genes as was previously thought, new analysis of published data reveals (PLoS Comput. Biol. 3, e120).

June 21

The World Health Organization announces a $2.2 billion plan to prevent the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis, including funding for new labs and for medicines to treat drug-resistant strains.

June 21

More than 60% of people who store embryos at US fertility clinics would be willing to donate them for stem cell research, according to a survey of about 2,000 infertile couples (Science, doi:10.1126/science.1145067).

June 21

Five years after the US FDA warned women that estrogen therapy can increase their risk of stroke and heart attack, new analysis reveals that the therapy is actually beneficial for women in their 50s (N. Engl. J. Med. 356, 2591–2602).

June 23

The makers of vitamins, herbal pills and other dietary supplements will be required to confirm that their products are free of contaminants, the US FDA announces (Nat. Med. 9, 634–635; 2003).

June 26

Psychiatrists top the list of doctors in Vermont and Minnesota who receive money from drug makers for lectures, research and trips, The New York Times reports.

June 27

Using week-old mouse embryos, researchers harvest stem cells that behave almost exactly like human embryonic stem cells, providing potentially good substitutes for research on human diseases (Nature doi:10.1038/nature05972).

June 27

David Schwartz, director of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, misused public funds and broke conflict-of-interest rules, The Washington Post reports.

June 27

A Kazakhstani judge convicts 21 health workers and officials of criminal negligence for infecting more than 100 children with HIV, allegedly through contaminated blood and equipment (Nature, doi:10.1038/news070618–12).

June 28

Use of a class of antidepressants that includes Paxil and Prozac in pregnant women slightly increases their offspring's risk of rare birth defects (N. Engl. J. Med. 356, 2675–2683 and 2684–2692).

June 28

Scientists derive embryonic stem cells from unfertilized eggs chemically stimulated to retain both sets of chromosomes, a process that could generate genetically matched cells for therapy (Cloning Stem Cells, doi:10.1089/clo.2007.0033).

June 28

Scientists succeed in turning one species into another by replacing the DNA of Mycoplasma capricolum, a goat pathogen, with DNA from the closely related bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides (Science, doi:10.1126/science.1144622).

July 2

The US suspends Texas A&M University's bioweapons research after the school fails to report that researchers there were exposed to agents that cause Q fever and brucellosis.

July 2

Scientists identify two neutralizing antibodies that protect against the coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed more than 700 people in China in 2002–2003 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA doi:10.1073/pnas.0701000104).

July 2

Canadian scientists announce the birth of the first child from an egg that was matured in a lab, frozen, thawed, fertilized and then implanted, a process that might help women undergoing cancer treatment to later conceive (Nat. Med. 9, 1095).

July 3

Scientists produce cloned sperm by injecting mouse sperm into mouse eggs from which the genetic material had been removed, a process they hope to replicate in humans within five years.

July 3

Andrew Speaker, the American initially diagnosed with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis in May and then forcibly quarantined, is instead infected with a less severe multidrug-resistant strain of the bacterium, US health officials say.

July 4

Abbott Laboratories agrees to slash the price of its antiretroviral drug Kaletra in Brazil by 35%, following two years of contentious negotiations with the Brazilian government.

July 5

Screening embryos for genetic abnormalities before implanting them in older women reduces the women's chances of having a baby, suggesting that screening might harm the embryos, Dutch scientists report (N. Engl. J. Med. 357, 9–17).

July 5

Depression may stem from a single spot deep in the hippocampus, a point at which researchers observed reduced electrical activity in depressed rats but not in rats given antidepressants (Science, doi:10.1126/science.1144400).

July 7

HIV infection increases the risk of developing at least 20 types of cancer—far more than the 7 previously identified—including many caused by infections, suggesting that cancer risk is linked to immune suppression (Lancet 370, 59–67).

July 11

Indian president Abdul Kalam receives the UK's King Charles II medal for furthering science in India, which has more than doubled its budget for science and research since Kalam took office in 2002.

July 12

UK scientists have increased international collaborations by almost 50% in the past 10 years and now work more with scientists in China than with those in any European country, a UK government report finds.

July 12

Many of the genes that control a cell's identity can initiate transcription even when they are inactive, suggesting that the right signal could at any time transform one cell type into another, US researchers say (Cell 130, 77–88).

July 16

Reports of heart attacks and heart-related hospitalizations in individuals taking the diabetes drug Avandia tripled following the publication in June of an analysis linking the drug to heart problems, an Associated Press investigation finds.

July 18

Specialized immune cells that trigger asthma also produce a hormone that boosts the appetite, offering a potential explanation for the link between asthma and obesity, researchers say (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA doi:10.1073/pnas.0705457104).

July 18

A low-fat, high-fiber diet does not reduce the risk of breast cancer recurrence, say US researchers who tracked more than 3,000 women for seven years (JAMA 298, 289–298).

July 19

An HIV-positive individual's 'set point'—at which viral load levels off after the immune system starts fighting the infection—predicts disease progression and may be determined in part by genetic variants in three major histocompatibility complex genes (Science, doi:10.1126/science.1143767).