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Juggling the demands of a career and a family is a challenge that confronts many researchers. Are universities doing enough to help academics cope with these often-conflicting commitments?
When pathways vital for development go awry, the consequences can be disastrous. This collection of reviews highlights emerging translational aspects of developmental biology at a time when the first clinical applications are taking shape.
The laboratory mouse is widely considered the model organism of choice for studying the diseases of humans, with whom they share 99% of their genes. A distinguished history of mouse genetic experimentation has been further advanced by the development of powerful new tools to manipulate the mouse genome. The recent launch of several international initiatives to analyse the function of all mouse genes through mutagenesis, molecular analysis and phenotyping underscores the utility of the mouse for translating the information stored in the human genome into increasingly accurate models of human disease.
Scientists are seeking permission to generate human embryonic stem cells to study disease by introducing human genetic material into an animal oocyte. This has raised ethical questions that centre on whether the entities being generated are actually human. The answer to these questions will determine how this area of research will be regulated and whether such work will be legal. The function of the extra-nuclear mitochondrial genome lies at the heart of these issues and forms the focus of this commentary.
Laboratories depend on an international workforce, yet crossing national boundaries remains a trial of endurance for many academics both in the United States and Europe.
Information exchange in biology has already been enriched by online-only journals, databases, blogs and conference webcasting, but now Nature Precedings, an open access document sharing tool, aims to bring the community in line with the physical sciences, which have long used preprint servers.
The irreversibility of cell-cycle transitions is commonly thought to derive from the irreversible degradation of certain regulatory proteins. We argue that irreversible transitions in the cell cycle (or in any other molecular control system) cannot be attributed to a single molecule or reaction, but that they derive from feedback signals in reaction networks. This systems-level view of irreversibility is supported by many experimental observations.
Junior researchers are encouraged to gain experience abroad, and for senior scientists, sabbaticals remain popular. France has taken the next step in fostering international exchange, by supporting long-term collaborations with foreign laboratories and by creating research units abroad.
