Science/AAAS Webinar
New technologies for translational research: Applying high-content screening in cancer research and personalized medicine
Learn how high content screening and novel computer modeling are being applied to systems biology, translational cancer research, and personalized medicine.
Register to view TODAY: webinar.sciencemag.org
Produced by the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office and sponsored by PerkinElmer.
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Science
Weekly News
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| A roundup of the week’s top stories in Science:
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| In Brief |
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In science news around the world, Canadian researchers call for a ban on new mining of the nation’s oil sands; the Giant Magellan Telescope gets a green light to begin construction in northern Chile; the Large Hadron Collider is back online and smashing protons together at energies nearly twice as high as its first run; thousands of Russian scientists protest government reforms of the research system; and the European Commission rejects a plea to abolish animal research across the European Union, saying that this would harm biomedical research. Also, a new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature finds that more than 90 species of marine fish in Europe’s waters are threatened with extinction due to overfishing, pollution, and development. And a new study links El Niño events over the past 10,000 years to booms in bunny populations in Mexico’s Baja California.
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| In Depth |
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Infectious Diseases
Kai Kupferschmidt
Crowds wearing facemasks on Asian city streets, soaring numbers of cases and deaths, rumors and panic. To anyone who remembers the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, the reports from South Korea last week about another viral disease seemed grimly familiar. But virologists downplay parallels between SARS and the new outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). The South Korean MERS outbreak is the biggest ever outside of Saudi Arabia. Yet the virus doesn’t spread as easily as the SARS virus, and it shows no signs of mutating to become more dangerous. Christian Drosten, a virologist at the University of Bonn in Germany, says there is little doubt that South Korea will bring the virus under control. The episode may even have a silver lining: It could aid understanding of MERS, which was discovered only in 2012. In contrast to Saudi Arabia’s reticence to let foreign scientists in or share data and samples, South Korea has so far provided regular updates and shared the virus with some outside experts.
Paleontology
Robert F. Service
Fossil hunters have long looked for bits of organic matter in ancient bones, hoping to learn about the organisms they’re studying. But most proteins and other organic matter completely decay within hundreds to thousands of years after the animal has died. Ten years ago, researchers in the United States reported that they had found surviving bits of proteins in 68-million-year-old dinosaur bones. But independent researchers have yet to confirm the result. Now, researchers in the United Kingdom report that they, too, have spotted surviving organic matter in eight dinosaur fossils that have been sitting in London’s Natural History Museum for a century. If true, it holds out hope that organic matter in dinosaur fossils may be much more common than once thought. But the researchers have yet to prove that the proteins they have found indeed belong to the original dinosaur and not contaminants.
Paleoclimatology
Jane Qiu
Well before an asteroid struck the planet some 66 million years ago, Earth was already in turmoil, a record from an ancient lakebed in northeastern China suggests. Investigators knew from ocean floor sediments that the climate was unstable at the end of the Cretaceous period, when the dinosaurs were making their last stand. But findings from deep drilling in the Songliao Basin show that the climate swings on land were far more drastic, with average annual temperatures going up or down by as much as 20°C over tens of thousands of years—a geological eyeblink. The findings support a growing consensus that a one-two punch felled the dinosaurs and their contemporaries.
Neuroscience
Emily Underwood
In recent decades, investigators have developed therapies for depression, Parkinson’s disease, deafness, and other conditions that rely on electrodes sending signals into the brain. But moving from laboratory experiments to the clinic has been difficult. Last week, in a workshop at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, researchers focused on ways to remove some of the obstacles to developing new therapies using invasive neuromodulating devices, as well as the ethical and practical issues such devices raise. Two new rounds of grants from President Barack Obama’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative this summer aim to bridge the gap between promising preclinical studies with invasive brain devices and large human trials.
Animal Rights
David Grimm
In 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project filed a series of lawsuits asking courts to recognize four New York chimpanzees as legal persons and free them from captivity. The animal rights group, which hopes to set a precedent for research chimps everywhere, has yet to succeed, but in April a judge ordered Stony Brook University to defend its possession of two of these animals, Hercules and Leo. Last month, the group and the university squared off in court, and the judge is expected to issue a decision soon. But the scientist working with the chimps, anatomist Susan Larson, has remained largely silent until now. In an exclusive interview, Larson talks about her work with these animals and the impact the litigation is having on her studies—and research animals in general.
Molecular Epidemiology
Jon Cohen
New genetic studies that compare different HIV isolates with each other are allowing researchers to create sophisticated maps of transmission networks. These phylogenetic transmission maps, in turn, are pinpointing where prevention efforts can get the most bang for their buck. A meeting held at the New York Academy of Sciences in New York City on 4 June gathered researchers, representatives from public health organizations, and HIV/AIDS advocates to discuss the latest studies in this emerging field, which revealed several surprising findings about HIV’s spread in many different geographic regions around the world. The meeting participants also discussed at length the ethical and legal dilemmas raised by such research, which even though it does not specify who infected whom might be misused by, for example, jurisdictions that allow criminal prosecution of HIV transmission.
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Jeffrey Mervis
The spread of an entrepreneurial culture is helping academic scientists as they make the arduous journey from a discovery to a product. The support comes in various sizes and shapes: campus competitions to solicit commercially viable ideas, universities establishing their own venture capital funds and “incubators” to nurture startup companies, and programs such as the Innovation Corps at the National Science Foundation. And although some scientists decide to leave campus to follow their commercial dreams, most do not. They like research and teaching, for one thing, and they often don’t think they have what it takes to run a company. Here are several stories that illustrate the many possible paths from campus to commercialization.
Jon Cohen
The world of venture capital is a mysterious place to most researchers, as it has its own jargon and customs. Two venture capitalists who work at companies that fund life science startups explain how they got into the business of helping scientific entrepreneurs, what they look for, where they find ideas, and common misconceptions they run into from would-be makers of drugs and diagnostics. Robert Nelsen of ARCH Venture Partners in Seattle, Washington, and Anthony Sun of Aisling Capital in New York City frankly discuss both the ups and downs of this most risky business, which holds the promise of yielding great rewards both for investors and people in need of new options to improve their health.
Trisha Gura
Incubators for biotech firms are popping up around the world, with the Boston and Northern California regions home to some of the most popular—and most successful, in terms of firms “graduated” to bigger sites and money raised by tenants. For example, LabCentral, a nonprofit organization occupying a renovated, 2600-square-meter facility leased from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, allows any scientist with an idea and ambition to rent a lab bench and an office, sharing space, services, and high-cost tools with others pursuing their own entrepreneurial dreams. There’s already a waiting list for slots, and LabCentral tenants last year raised some $200 million in funding. “It is very exciting because we are there at the nascent moment of many really, really cool companies,” says molecular biologist Johannes Fruehauf, a LabCentral founder.
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Science/AAAS Webinar
New technologies for translational research: Applying high-content screening in cancer research and personalized medicine
Learn how high content screening and novel computer modeling are being applied to systems biology, translational cancer research, and personalized medicine.
Register to view TODAY: webinar.sciencemag.org
Produced by the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office and sponsored by PerkinElmer.
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Science and the future 