Important goal achieved in potential animal-to-human organ transplantation

In a session today at the annual meeting of the International Embryo Transfer Society (IETS), Randall Prather, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Reproductive Biotechnology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, announced the successful cloning of the first miniature swine with both copies of a specific gene “knocked out” of its DNA. The ultimate goal of this research, which is being conducted in partnership wi

A research team led by Johns Hopkins scientists has discovered that a special, tiny group of cells at the back of the eye help tell the brain how much light there is, causing the pupil to get bigger or smaller. The findings, which appeared in the Jan. 10 issue of Science, largely complete the picture of how light levels are detected in the eye.

“This tiny group of cells, together with rods and cones, are the bulk of the eye’s mechanisms for detecting levels of light and passing that in

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) report in an upcoming article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society their synthesis of a form of the bacterium Escherichia coli with a genetic code that uses 21 basic amino acid building blocks to synthesize proteins–instead of the 20 found in nature.

This is the first time that anyone has created a completely autonomous organism that uses 21 amino acids and has the metabolic machinery to build those amino acids.

“We

Climate change had little to do with the demise of the dinosaurs, but the last million years before their extinction had a complex pattern of warming and cooling events that are important to our understanding of the end of their reign, according to geologists.

“The terrestrial paleoclimate record near the K-T is historically contradictory and poorly resolved,” says Dr. Peter Wilf, assistant professor of geosciences at Penn State. “In contrast, the resolution of K-T marine climates that has

Results from two large European studies suggest that adjuvant chemotherapy immediately after surgery for early-stage ovarian cancer can increase some patients’ chances of both overall and recurrence-free survival. The findings are reported in three articles in the January 15 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

As many as 50% of patients with early-stage ovarian cancer relapse after surgery, and these subsequent tumor recurrences are often resistant to treatment. Adju

An artificial disc being studied as a replacement for damaged discs of the spine has been approved to move into Phase II trials, making it available to more patients, according to John J. Regan, M.D., director of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Institute for Spinal Disorders. A recently completed Phase I study compared the prosthesis to traditional fusion. In that phase, patients were randomized, with one having a fusion operation for every two that received the artificial disc. Now all patien