News & Views in 2003

Field trials of several herbicide tolerant transgenic crops should be a first step toward understanding their effects on the environment.

Plants that express two Bt toxins have the potential to delay insect resistance more effectively than single toxin plants.

An ancient, archaeal splicing endonuclease provides a promising alternative for gene therapy.

Antigen-binding fluorescent proteins provide a powerful tool for immunodetection-based assays.

A new technique in mouse cloning leads to dramatically higher birthrates.

Designing enzymes with protective shells that are cleaved once they arrive at inflammatory sites can be used to enhance immune therapy.

By combining data from gene expression and DNA-binding experiments, a computational algorithm identifies the genetic regulatory network in yeast.

Two tagged proteome studies offer the most intimate and detailed view into the inner works of yeast cells to date.

The complete genome sequence of the insect pathogen and nematode symbiont Photorhabdus luminescens identifies a trove of antibiotic and toxin genes.

Expressing insecticidal proteins from sources other than Bacillus thuringiensis in crop plants should reduce the likelihood for development of insect resistance to toxins.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer from human donor cells to enucleated rabbit oocytes is being investigated as a way of generating embryonic stem cells.

Protein arrays can now be generated by mass spectrometry.

Long-lived fuel cells lacking diffusional electron mediators have been created that convert simple and abundant sugars into electricity with >80% efficiency.

Systematic mineral element profiling of Arabidopsis thaliana holds promise for engineering plants with enhanced nutritional value.

Random peptide libraries displayed in the viral capsid enable the selection of AAV vectors for targeted gene delivery.

An automaton built with DNA enzymes plays tic-tac-toe against human players.

Characterization and manipulation of a novel prenyltransferase from monocot plant seeds reveal its capacity to produce tocotrienols and increase this form of vitamin E in transgenic plants by 10- to 15-fold.