A postdoc by day and a scientific activist by night, Nick Anthis isn't letting his research in protein structure and function get in the way of defending scientific and social progress.
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Just as I was in the process of finishing my doctorate in August, I found out that my first first-author paper had been accepted for publication by The EMBO Journal. This was good news, because we were reporting some pretty fundamental findings in a relatively saturated field, and one of our competitors had managed to successfully stall the acceptance of this paper since March. Up until that point, witnessing this happen firsthand had been a somewhat frustrating and disillusioning experience for a young scientist, but I think that we were vindicated in the end. Anyway, this paper--and another paper that I contributed to--were published online earlier this month.
These studies both explore the important biological process of integrinactivation. The first paper (Anthis et al.) provides some new basic molecular details for how this process is carried out in the cell. Cells in humans and other higher organisms exist in a dynamic environment, alternately grasping and disengaging from the three-dimensional web of their surroundings (i.e. the extracellular matrix). Many of these tasks involve a family of proteins called integrins, which act as the "hands" of the cell. The cell internally controls whether an integrin is adhesive by signals from within the cell, using another protein called talin. By exploring the detailed three-dimensional structure of a talin/integrin complex, we showed how key interactions between talin, the integrin, and the inner surface of the cell membrane can elegantly promote the structural changes outside the cell that modulate adhesion strength.
The following figure (from my thesis) illustrates the process of integrin activation:
Late last week, I received emails from two journals (The Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) and PLoS ONE) indicating that they are now incorporating interactive 3D images of molecular structures in their papers. The atomic coordinates of all published biomolecular structures have been available for some time at the Protein Data Bank. However, making sense of something as complex as a protein structure can require quite a bit of analysis. So, scientists go through great pains to represent important features of their structures in 2D images for publication. Ostensibly, this new functionality will save readers time and enhance their understanding by letting them explore these structures, but starting with the important features already highlighted.
After a quick look at these new interactive 3D images, though, I have to admit that I'm finding the experience slightly cumbersome. Still, this is a good idea, and I imagine that the experience will be improved over time. You can check out the first JBC paper incorporating the interactive images here, and a collection of papers in PLos ONE incorporating the images here. Below is the press release on the subject from PLoS ONE:
I recently had the pleasure of writing an op-ed piece about health care reform for my hometown newspaper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and it ran in the paper today. You can check it out online here. I grew up reading the Star-Telegram, so this was an exciting opportunity.
My article discusses the need for robust health care reform in the form of a strong public option, comparing and contrasting my health care experiences in the US and the UK to build my case. For regular readers of my blog, you will note that this is a theme I have often explored.
I would have preferred that the Star-Telegram ran this with the title I suggested (given above as the title of this blog post), which I think most precisely conveys the meaning of the rest of the article. (My point is not necessarily that health care reform would cut down wait times, but that it would reduce the time individuals waste dealing with health care administration in general.) But, that is only a minor complaint; overall this was a very enjoyable experience, and I had a good back-and-forth discussion with the opinion editor, J.R. Labbe, in the run-up to publication.
The winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry have been announced, and the prize will be shared equally between Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz, and Ada Yonath "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome." The information encoded in DNA is decoded to produce functional proteins in two stages: transcription (DNA --> RNA) and translation (RNA --> protein). This prize was awarded for the work that described this second stage in atomic detail, and you can read more about it in the scientific background document released with the prize announcement. This prize complements the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was awarded for atomic-resolution work on transcription (although the transcription prize was specifically for work on eukaryotes, and the work recognized by the translation prize was carried out on prokaryotes).
This prize marks the sixth time in eight years that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded for biological work, and most of these have been for atomic-resolution structural biological work (X-ray crystallography in three cases, NMR in one). As I've noted before, crystallography and NMR involve a mix of biology, chemistry, and physics, so it's reasonable that such work is often recognized by the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
I have a bone to pick with The Weather Channel, and it has to do with misuse of statistics. This is something I noticed a long time ago, so it's about time I said something about it. The problem here is fairly obvious, so I'm sure many others have noticed this before. Also, this may not be specific to The Weather Channel, but I'm just using it as an example because that is where I have observed this problem.
To the left, you can see tomorrow's forecast for Austin, Texas, from The Weather Channel. The key piece of information here (for this post) is that there is a 40% chance of precipitation. There is a little bit of ambiguity as to what exactly this means, but I interpret this as saying that there is a 40% chance that at some point tomorrow it will rain. Since The Weather Channel gives forecasts for both the day and the night, I'm going to assume that this forecast only pertains to daylight hours.
That's all well and good, but below I have pasted the hourly forecast for tomorrow. Can you spot the problem?
Today, the Nobel Committee announced the winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, equally shared between Elizabeth Blackburn of UCSF, Carol Greider of Johns Hopkins, and Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School--all three American. This year's prize was awarded for the discovery of telomeres, the repeated sequences of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that protect the integrity of the chromosomal DNA, and for the discovery of telomerase, the enzyme that builds the telomeres.
This prize recognizes seminal work in molecular genetics and biology that unlocked some of the basic secrets of how our cells function. These studies were also relevant to cancer biology. Most cells in the adult exhibit only limited telomerase activity, meaning that as cells divide and replicate their DNA, the chromosomes' telomeres become shorter. This limits the number of times a cell can divide and contributes to aging. Cancer cells, however, can exhibit overactive telomerase, allowing them to divide uncontrollably.
Another interesting dimension of this prize is that Elizabeth Blackburn in particular has been highly engaged in the national dialogue on science policy in recent years. In 2004, Blackburn was instrumental in revealing how politically-charged and dysfunctional George W. Bush's President's Council on Bioethics was. From 2001 to 2004 she served as one of only three full-time biomedical researchers on the 17-to-18-member council. In 2004, she was fired from the council, along with another member who disagreed with the administration's position on some of the relevant issues.
Blackburn spokeout about the Council of Bioethics, demonstrating that despite its written mission to be a body that monitors research developments and recommends appropriate guidelines, it was really just a tool for parroting the Bush Administration's positions on certain hot-button issues--particularly embryonic stem cell research. Thus, Blackburn played a central and important role in revealing the extent of the political interference in science that pervaded the Bush Administration.
Members of the Obama Administration have mentioned using science for diplomatic purposes on various occasions, most notably when President Barack Obama himself included this idea in his address at Cairo University in June. Today, SEEDMAGAZINE.COM published an article by Harvard's Sheila Jasanoff on this subject, which you can read here. Seed has asked me to provide commentary on her article as this week's Featured Blogger, which you can read here.
The Jasanoff article focuses specifically on the appointment of science envoys, a central component of the Obama Administration's scientific diplomacy plan. Mine, on the other hand, is more about scientific diplomacy in general. I generally agree with the Jasanoff article, although I think that her "five common misconceptions" should be taken with a grain of salt, since they're more related to the application of science rather than using a common interest in science to bridge a cultural gap.
As I indicated earlier this summer, the blogging would continue to be a bit slow as I entered the home stretch of grad school. Since then, I'm happy to report that I have submitted my thesis, successfully defended it, resubmitted a corrected version, and had my final thesis accepted. Within the next few weeks, I should receive a letter from Oxford officially conferring my D.Phil. (Oxford's equivalent of the Ph.D.) in biochemistry, and I'll head back to Oxford with my family in late October for graduation. Then, in November, I'll start a postdoc at the NIH.
So, I anticipate that the blogging will remain slow for the next couple of months, as I won't be settled in to my new job and new apartment until sometime in November. In the meantime, I'll be bouncing around from place to place; I'm currently visiting my girlfriend in LA, but later this week I'll head back to Texas before flying to DC to try to secure housing for myself. I appreciate your patience during this transition, and I'm looking forward to getting back in the swing of things before too long.
Yesterday, I took the kids to the doctor for their school physicals. I wouldn't normally subject you to an account of the day-to-day minutia of my personal life, but given the current debate about how we should handle health care in the United States, the details might be of interest.
We arrived - without an appointment - at a medical facility that we had not been to before. We did not have medical records with us, and the only paperwork of any kind that we had brought were the forms that needed to be filled out to enroll the kids in sports programs. When we checked in, the only thing I had to do was hand the clerk a government-issued photo ID. I did not have to fill out any insurance forms, I did not have to hand over any payment of any kind, and I didn't touch a clipboard. Within two hours, both the children had been seen by a doctor, received physical exams, had their shot records checked and brought up to date where necessary, and I'd been given the completed school and sports forms.
That's not fiction, and it's not a prediction of what could happen in the future. That happened yesterday, it happened in the United States, and it happened in a health care system that's owned and operated by the Federal Government.
That's right. I got to use the dreaded socialized medicine yesterday, because I've got access to the Department of Defense's medical system.
We didn't have to fill out forms yesterday because all the paperwork that needed to be done to switch our primary care doctor from one in Florida to one in Alabama was done when my wife checked in to her new assignment. We didn't need to bring records, because both facilities have access to the same electronic system. All that the clinic needed to access the records was my wife's information.
I mention this because it reminded me so much of something I wrote about previously on my blog:
This is kind of silly, but it's always interesting to see what the right-wing attack machine comes up with when it gets desperate. Now it appears that they're going after President Obama's rather innocuous science advisor, John Holdren. Specifically, a recent article in The Washington Times--that bastion of rational commentary--claimed that Holdren "has toyed with extreme measures of population control, even suggesting in one book how to make it more publicly acceptable for the government to spike drinking water in order to sterilize people."
Does that sound just a bit too absurd to be true? That's because it is. Chris Mooney explains just how misinformed this claim is in a post at Science Progress:
Yesterday, Americans for Medical Progress revealed the three recipients of its 2009 Hayre Fellowship in Public Outreach. Applicants submitted proposals for programs aimed at spreading awareness about the role of animal research in medicine, and the three fellows will receive a $5,000 stipend each, plus an addition $2,000 to fund their proposals. This year's fellows are Gillian Braden-Weiss and Breanna Caltagarone, who are veterinary students at the University of Pennsylvania, and Megan Wyeth, a graduate student at UCLA. Here's a summary of the projects they are going to be working on:
As veterinary students at the University of Pennsylvania and active members of the Laboratory Animal Medicine Club, Gillian Braden-Weiss and Breanna Caltagarone will create a "Thank a Mouse" animal research outreach program for private practice veterinarians and their clients. Through the development of a website and other interactions, they will raise awareness for existing and future contributions of animal research to veterinary care.
Megan Wyeth, a graduate student who conducts epilepsy research at UCLA, was a student leader of the UCLA Pro-Test campus rally this April in support of scientists' work in animal research. Now, as a Hayre Fellow, Megan will help to expand the student-based group Pro-Test for Science on the UCLA campus and foster similar student organizations nationwide.
When the NIH released its draft guidelines on human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research in late April, they were open to a 30-day period of public comment before the formulation of the final rules. Today, the NIH has released its final guidelines (pdf).
Not much has changed, so there's not really much to say that I haven't already. The bad news is that the fairly restrictive nature of the rules was maintained (i.e. no federal funds for hESC lines derived from embryos generated specifically for research), but the good news is that the government didn't cave into some fairly outlandish requests (clearly from anti-abortion activists) to insert some loaded language into the rules.
Check out the full document (pdf) for the text of the final rules and a point-by-point reply to the major comments.
In an attempt to save the sinking ship that is his current government, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has extensively shuffled his cabinet. As part of this the science (formerly the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills [DIUS]) has been merged with business (formerly the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform [DBERR]) to form the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (DBIS). Paul Drayson will remain Minister of Science, but--in another twist--he'll now also be moonlighting as Minister of Defence Procurement (a position he has held previously).
Unfortunately, from what I've seen of Drayson previously, both shifts seem to fit very well with his interest in science largely as an applied endeavor. These are worrying developments for a variety of reasons. This gives science a decreased prominence in the current government, both by being combined with another department and now sharing its minister with an only tangentially related area. And, philosophically at least, so closely tying science and defense to one another sends an unsettling message.
I'll admit that I haven't paid a terribly large amount of attention to the upcoming European Parliament elections (taking place in the UK Thursday--i.e. tomorrow) since I can't actually vote in them. However, maybe I should have been paying attention, based on a write-up by Frank Swain (SciencePunk) and Martin Robbins (The Lay Scientist) that appeared earlier this week in The Guardian's Science Blog.
Swain and Robbins' article--about the disconnect between the importance science will play in the issues the European Parliament will face versus the lack of attention science has received in the elections--is a follow-up on a survey they sent to the press offices of five major and minor UK parties on their scientific positions. I'd encourage you to take a look at the survey results yourself, but for me, at least, they solidified my opinion that if I were voting in the UK, I would probably be voting for the Liberal Democrats. Much of my thinking there, though, is influenced by our local situation in Oxford (which isn't related to the European Parliament elections), where we are represented by an excellent Lib Dem MP, Evan Harris, who has been an outspoken pro-science advocate on a variety of issues.
I realize that blogging has been pretty slow here lately. But, I have good reasons, I promise! I spent most of the month of May back in the US for my girlfriend's graduation and then for a cross-country move/Great American Road Trip. Meredith graduated from Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences on the 14th. Then, after the ensuing festivities, we packed up her truck and headed west to LA, where she's going to be working for the next year as a veterinary intern.
Now that I'm back in Oxford, though, I'm basically in 100% thesis completion mode. The fact that I may have possibly once upon a time told Meredith that I would definitely finish my degree before she finished hers might now be serving as additional motivation. Maybe. Regardless, between my thesis and the various papers I'm working on right now, the blogging will probably continue to be slow for a bit.
Although I've only written a bit about the recent outbreak of influenza A H1N1 (swine flu), I'd encourage you to take a look at this post by Kent Newsome that discusses where to find reliable information on this topic. This post is particularly nice, because it gives concrete examples of some of the useful things this blogger has learned from these various sources. Granted, most of the sources he discusses are affiliated with ScienceBlogs, but that shouldn't really be surprising, given that there has been so much quality blogging here recently on the topic of swine flu (particularly by Effect Measure and Aetiology).
On a mostly unrelated note, I'd also encourage you to check out the ScienceBlogs homepage right now for another example of things that ScienceBloggers do well: taking on pseudoscience. In this case, it's the outrageous ongoing explosion of quackery at The Huffington Post.
Update: Reader Sofia has also pointed me toward Virology Blog, which appears to have a large amount of scientifically-oriented information on the topic as well.
On Wednesday, the CDC reported that influenza A H1N1 viruses from 13 patients with confirmed diagnoses of swine flu had been tested for resistance to a variety of antiviral drugs. The good news was that all of the isolates were susceptible to the antiviral drugs oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza). However, all 13 were resistant to adamantane-based drugs (amantadine and rimantadine). Resistance to adamantane drugs (which were developed first) has actually become quite widespread among flu viruses in general, so oseltamivir and zanamivir are commonly the drugs of choice.
The reason for the difference is that the adamantane drugs target different viral proteins from oseltamivir and zanamivir. The two major proteins on the surface of the influenza virus are hemagglutinin (the "H" in H1N1) and neuraminidase (the "N"). Due to the evolution of the influenza virus over time, these proteins come in a variety of different forms, and we label strains of flu by the specific class of hemagglutinin and neuraminidase the virus carries (H1N1, H3N2, etc.). These are the largest proteins on the surface of the virus, and they are the ones that our immune system generally reacts to. However, they aren't the only ones.
The surface of the influenza virus also has a much smaller protein called M2, which acts as a channel to let hydrogen ions pass across the virus' outer membrane. M2 plays an important role in viral function (more on that below), and, not surprisingly, so do hemagglutinin and neuraminidase. Specifically, hemagglutinin allows the virus to attach to a cell in order to infect it, and after the virus has replicated within the cell, neuraminidase allows the daughter viruses to detach from that cell and infect other cells. For a more in depth description of these proteins, check out this post at Effect Measure.
Getting back to antiviral drugs, oseltamivir and zanamivir work by inhibiting neuraminidase (for details, once again check out the above post at Effect Measure or this more recent one). The adamantane-based drugs, however, target M2. In January 2008, two research groups independently published atomic-resolution structures of the M2 channel bound to an inhibitor. Using NMR, Jason Schnell (in James Chou's lab at Harvard) solved the structure of rimantadine bound to M2 (shown above with the drug in red). Alternatively, Amanda L. Stouffer (in William DeGrado's lab in Pennsylvania) used x-ray crystallography to solve the structure of amantadine bound to M2.
All academic medical centers, journals, professional societies, and other entities engaged in health research, education, clinical care, and development of practice guidelines should establish or strengthen conflict-of-interest policies, the report says. Disclosure by physicians and researchers not only to their employers but also to other medical organizations of their financial links to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device firms is an essential first step in identifying and managing conflicts of interest and needs to be improved. The committee noted substantial variations in institutions' conflict-of-interest policies and shortcomings in physicians' and researchers' adherence to policy requirements. The format for disclosure and categories of relationships should be standardized to help institutions judge the risk that a relationship poses and to ease the burden for individuals who must report information to multiple organizations with different policies.
In addition, Congress should require pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and device firms to report through a public Web site the payments they make to doctors, researchers, academic health centers, professional societies, patient advocacy groups, and others involved in medicine. A public record like this could serve as a deterrent to inappropriate relationships and undue industry influence. It also would provide medical institutions with a way to verify the accuracy of information that physicians, researchers, and senior officials have disclosed to them.
The report calls on researchers, medical school faculty, and private-practice doctors to forgo gifts of any amount from medical companies and to decline to publish or present material ghostwritten or otherwise controlled by industry. Consulting arrangements should be limited to legitimate expert services spelled out in formal contracts and paid for at a fair market rate. Physicians should limit their interactions with company sales representatives and use free drug samples only for patients who cannot afford medications. Several professional organizations and industry groups have set new limits on gift giving and other relationships between industry and the medical community, but it is too soon to gauge the effects these changes, the committee noted.
The Republican party today moved another step closer to becoming just the regional party of the South by losing one of its most respected members, Senator Arlen Specter (PA). Citing the Republicans' notable swing to the right in recent years, Specter announced earlier that he would be switching parties to join the Democrats. His switch will give the Democrats a filibuster-proof 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, assuming the courts uphold Al Franken's victory in the Minnesota Senate race.
Without a doubt, this is a positive development. Fears that the Democrats will have "too much power" are overblown, as Specter will certainly continue to be an independent voice in the Democratic Party as he was in the Republican Party. More importantly, since Obama's inauguration, the GOP has done little else besides engage in obstructionist tactics, while offering few if any solutions of their own. This move, then, should at the very least help make Congress more productive.
You can read Specter's full remarks here, but here's a taste:
Earlier today, President Barack Obama delivered a major speech on science policy to the National Academy of Sciences. Read more about it in my previous post. Now, though, Andy Revkin of Dot Earth is trying to annotate the speech with relevant background information. Go help him out by providing relevant information in the comments section of his blog post.
I already submitted a comment about Obama's reference to his March 9th memo on political interference in science:
Today, President Barack Obama addressed the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), making him only the fourth president in modern times to do so (the other three were John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush). He touched on a variety of areas, but the major theme was a renewed commitment to science.
Specifically, Obama pledged that under his leadership, the US will devote more than three percent of GDP to research and development. In his words, this will be the "largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American History," even exceeding the investment made during the space race.
Obama also reiterated his March 9th pledge to end political interference in science in the federal government, emphasizing that "our values as a nation are rooted in free inquiry.
Overall, it was a reasonably impressive speech that's worth listening to (in addition to there being a lot to like about it from the perspective of a scientist). So, if you missed it this morning, I'd encourage you to give it a listen when you have a chance. There was a live audio feed from NAS and an audio/video feed from The Washington Post during the event, but it looks like those are no longer available. However, I believe that NAS should be posting the video on its site shortly. I'll let you know as soon as I find out it's available (there or elsewhere). In the meantime, you can read the full text of his remarks at Political Intelligence. Update: The National Academies site now has an mp3 audio recording of the speech available, and The National Academies Press site has both audio and video.
Last week, scientists and their supporters at UCLA held the first rally of their new chapter of the pro-research organization Pro-Test. In addition to the various other accounts that have been published, Tom Holder of Speaking of Research has now published his own very comprehensive first-hand account of the event. Check it out. He has included quite a few photos as well, such as this one:
About a week ago, the NIH announced its draft guidelines covering the funding of human embryonic stem cell research. You can read the draft guidelines here and my post on the topic here. As these are draft guidelines, they are open to a month-long period of public comment before the final guidelines are released, and an online system for accepting comments has just been opened up. Comments must be received by 11:00 pm EST on May 26, 2009, and you can enter your comments here.
Earlier I published a post about an interesting article by Andrew Revkin in today's New York Times about industry's willful ignorance of global warming science. There was an interesting quote in there that I didn't mention earlier about how journalistic practices enabled this campaign of misinformation:
George Monbiot, a British environmental activist and writer, said that by promoting doubt, industry had taken advantage of news media norms requiring neutral coverage of issues, just as the tobacco industry once had.
The idea stated in the title of this blog post is not novel--far from it, in fact. We have known for a long time that the auto industry, the oil industry, and others with a vested interest have engaged in a long-running campaign of misinformation to discredit the science behind global warming. Manufacturing doubt is a common strategy employed by those whose agenda falls on the wrong side of scientific fact. This includes creationists, pseudoscientists, global warming denialists, HIV denialists, and, very notably, the tobacco industry's notorious decades-long campaign to deny the link between smoking and cancer, despite the deniers' own undeniable knowledge that such a link existed.
The reason I bring all of this up now, though, is that The New York Times has an article by Andrew Revkin about some particularly interesting documents recently acquired by the Times. The documents, from the Global Climate Coalition (an industry group), shed light on how the group suppressed its own scientists and demonstrate that the group was actively aware it was spreading misinformation:
By all accounts, yesterday's UCLA Pro-Test rally in support of animal research was a great success. Up to 800 people showed up for the Pro-Test rally, but only 30-40 people showed up for a concurrent anti-research rally
These numbers are particularly notable for two reasons. Firstly, the number of supporters of animal researchers greatly dwarfed the number of detractors, an excellent illustration of how large this hitherto silent majority is compared to the fringe but vocal animal rights activists. Secondly, the number of participants at the UCLA rally was similar to the number that showed up at Pro-Test's threeOxfordrallies. This is an auspicious start, given how successful Pro-Test eventually was at making a positive impact in Oxford.
Accounts of yesterday's rally abound, but the following are some of the most informative, all from people who, as far as I can tell, were actually at the event. Let's start with a video from CNN:
Reading these memos, it's very clear that there are quite a few CIA employees who are allegedly medical professionals. Those people need to find new professions. I would strongly suggest that you take a few minutes - particularly if you're a doctor or a psychologist - to suggest to your colleagues at the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association that it might be good to take some formal steps along those lines.
This is related to another topic I've written about in pastposts: the complicity of medical professionals in the death penalty. In either case, people will argue that medical professionals should actually participate in these procedures to make sure they're carried out as humanely as possible. I can understand why people would put forth such an argument, but the fact of the matter is that neither the death penalty nor torture is a humane practice, even with the participation of medical practitioners.
In fact, the presence of these medical professionals does nothing but lend these horrible practices legitimacy. If medical professionals totally abstained from these practices, as the Hippocratic Oath compels them to, these practices would be much more difficult to carry out in the future.
Arguably the biggest news story of the week was the release by the Obama Administration of four Justice Department memos from 2002 and 2005 that were used to justify CIA torture of detainees. An analysis by Jeffrey Smith in today's Washington Post tries to explain the context and the mindset that led to the twisted logic found in these memos:
The four Justice Department memos to the CIA's top lawyer that were released last week reflect an effort by Bush administration appointees to create finely tuned justifications for harsh interrogation techniques, all under a blanket of secrecy covering the agency's prisons and the questioning.
In the wake of the memos' disclosure, it is clear that the lawyers and the CIA got it wrong in measuring the methods against their selected legal test: that they must not "shock the conscience." The brutality of the interrogation measures -- including repeatedly slamming people into walls, simulating their drowning and stuffing them into dark, constricting boxes -- shocked the conscience of at least some.
A month after the Obama Administration lifted Bush era restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, the NIH has now announced its new draft guidelines for such research. The new guidelines will greatly expand the scope of federally-funded research by allowing funds to be used for work on stem cell lines derived from excess fertility clinic embryos.
However, federal funds will not be available for work on hESC lines derived from embryos that have been generated specifically for the purpose of stem cell work. This is a pretty severe limitation, actually, and the rules basically ensure that if a cell line was derived from an embryo that was not left over from a fertility clinic, work on that cell line can never be funded by federal dollars. Ever.
The Lay Scientist has a new guest post up from British physician "DeeTee" about measles, a horrible disease that until recently had been virtually eradicated from the developed world. Unfortunately, despite the fact that measles is totally preventable with proper vaccination, the misguided campaigning of anti-vaccination fanatics has caused measles to once again raise its ugly head in our own backyard, as DeeTee explains:
But last year all that changed. Where I work we saw dozens of cases of measles over the summer. It was odd having to dredge my memory banks to remember details of this "lost" disease, but at least with measles once one has seen cases and one knows the symptoms and signs these are not easily forgotten.
And what are these tell tale signs? DeeTee describes some of the dramatic cases (s)he saw when training in Africa:
A postdoc by day and a scientific activist by night, Nick Anthis isn't letting his research in protein structure and function get in the way of defending scientific and social progress.
Just as I was in the process of finishing my doctorate in August, I found out that my first first-author paper had been accepted for publication by The EMBO Journal. This was good news, because we were reporting some pretty fundamental findings in a relatively saturated field, and one of our competitors had managed to successfully stall the acceptance of this paper since March. Up until that point, witnessing this happen firsthand had been a somewhat frustrating and disillusioning experience for a young scientist, but I think that we were vindicated in the end. Anyway, this paper--and another paper that I contributed to--were published online earlier this month.
The reason for the difference is that the adamantane drugs target different viral proteins from oseltamivir and zanamivir. The two major proteins on the surface of the influenza virus are hemagglutinin (the "H" in H1N1) and neuraminidase (the "N"). Due to the evolution of the influenza virus over time, these proteins come in a variety of different forms, and we label strains of flu by the specific class of hemagglutinin and neuraminidase the virus carries (H1N1, H3N2, etc.). These are the largest proteins on the surface of the virus, and they are the ones that our immune system generally reacts to. However, they aren't the only ones.
