Life Sciences and Chemistry

Technique could lead to new drugs as well as industrial processes

The diversity of nature may be enormous, but for Michael Hecht it is just a starting point.

Hecht, a Princeton professor of chemistry, has invented a technique for making protein molecules from scratch, a long-sought advance that will allow scientists to design the most basic building blocks of all living things with a variety of shapes and compositions far greater than those available in nature.

The

Unprecedented genetic access to brain provided by Rockefeller University scientists

For scientists studying the brain, this week’s Nature announces a remarkable new map describing previously uncharted territory, plus the means of exploring the new horizons for themselves. Rockefeller University scientists led by Nat Heintz, Ph.D., and Mary Beth Hatten, Ph.D., are well under way on a genetic atlas of the mammalian brain that provides unprecedented access to central nervous system

A new mouse model developed by Harvard Medical School researchers and reported in the October 30 Neuron may allow scientists for the first time to spotlight two key proteins in a living animal and see how they contribute to the neuronal death and atrophy found in neurodegenerative diseases. The two proteins are dubbed p25 and cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (Cdk5).

“This is an excellent animal model for any therapeutic approach toward p25 and its link to Alzheimer’s and similar neurodegenera

Inside view of pterosaurs’ brain yields insights to posture, behavior

With its 13-foot wing span, a flying dinosaur soars above a lake, scanning for dinner as its shadow glides across the water’s surface below. Eying a fish, the aerobatic reptile, called a pterosaur, dives through the air, its shadow shrinking and darkening until – splash! The fish is in the pterosaur’s beak, which resembles a cross between a pelican’s bill and a crocodile’s snout.

While s

Duke University Medical Center neurobiologists have discovered how neurons in the brain “reset” when they are overly active. This molecular reset switch works to increase or decrease the sensitivity of brain cells to stimulation by their neighbors. Such “homeostatic plasticity” is critical for the brain to adapt to changes in the environment — either to avoid having its neurons swamped by increased activity of a neural pathway, or rendered too insensitive to detect triggering impulses from other neu

Chemistry & Industry Magazine

The discovery of a gene responsible for learning and memory defects in Down’s Syndrome means mental retardation may soon be reversible, according to a report in this issue of Chemistry & Industry magazine. The gene was discovered by a group led by William Mobley, director of a new centre for Down ’s syndrome research at Stanford University, California.

’The bottom line is that we have found one gene that we think is very important