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The news that a child in a gene-therapy trial has developed cancer has cast a cloud over the technique. But this has more to do with the field's chequered history than the particular circumstances of this tragic case.
With one French gene-therapy patient having developed a form of cancer, a frantic detective effort is under way to determine what went wrong — and to assess the risks faced by others. Erika Check reports.
In the 1960s, a Russian physicist considered the properties of a material that didn't yet exist. Now researchers appear to have fulfilled his predictions — but is everything as it seems? Liesbeth Venema investigates.
Efficient cloning will require the ability to reset the gene-expression programmes of specialized cells, in the same way that sperm and eggs form undifferentiated embryonic cells.
Application of book-keeping principles to metabolic networks provides a powerful technique for understanding the properties of microorganisms and predicting the results of genetic modification.
New observations suggest that earthquakes on land are only 'skin-deep', confined to the Earth's outermost layer of crust. This has prompted a rethink of what gives the tectonic plates their strength.
Although radiation at terahertz frequencies has many uses, most sources cannot generate terahertz beams with great power. Magnetic manipulation of energetic electrons inside a particle accelerator offers a solution.
How can you remember what you've just read or seen or done? The issue of short-term memory has vexed neuroscientists for more than half a century; a new study adds an unexpected piece to the puzzle.
Fine details of the filamentary structure of sunspots are revealed in new observations. These high-resolution measurements herald the quality of data to be expected from a new generation of solar telescopes.
Cyclooxygenase enzymes produce lipid messenger molecules whose roles in health or disease depend on their context. The discovery of cyclooxygenase-3 should enhance our knowledge of such events.
It is more than a decade since the discovery that vertebrate Hox genes are arranged and expressed in the same order as the body parts they help to produce. New work looks at how this is achieved in fingers and toes.
The unifying strand that runs through this Collection of reviews is computation, whether it be the production of sophisticated models against which reality is compared, or the subtle analyses that derive patterns and trends from vast and noisy data sets. To make sense of this wealth of data will require sensibilities more normally associated with mathematicians and engineers.
