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The woes of the biotechnology sector have been compounded by technical obstacles for companies seeking to develop cloning technologies. For benefits to materialize, scientific understanding needs fostering by industry and governments.
Sequencing the chimpanzee has emerged as a top genomic priority. David Cyranoski asks the chimp's champions what they hope to gain from studying the genome of our closest living relative.
Natural gas is in great demand, and researchers know where vast amounts are hidden — in icy crystals called hydrates. But getting it out is another matter, as David Adam finds out.
Real-time microscopy is providing fresh insights in many fields of biology. Immunology is no exception, as demonstrated by striking images of the inner workings of dendritic cells.
Radioisotope dating of meteorites suggests that planets formed in the Solar System over shorter timescales than had been thought. There are consequences for how the Moon formed, but is this the final word?
Certain episodes of mass fish mortality in coastal waters off the eastern United States have been ascribed to a planktonic organism called Pfiesteria. There are now fresh clues to how these fish are killed.
Hox proteins are needed during development to produce body segments with different shapes and functions. In fruitflies, one Hox protein sculpts certain segments of the head by activating a cell-death-inducing gene.
The powerful Gulf Stream carries warm water from the Caribbean to Europe. Satellite images have tracked an unusual, cold plume of water from the American coast that traversed the Stream in October 2001.
Biomass can produce clean fuels and could be a vital, renewable energy source for the future. The demonstration of hydrogen production from biomass-derived molecules marks progress towards this goal.
Not everything that we learn is useful, so the brain needs a mechanism to prevent itself being burdened by unhelpful details. The molecular details of this mechanism are now being uncovered.
