News & Comment

Advocates of 'Intelligent Design' cite the bacterial flagellum as an example of an irreducibly complex organelle that cannot have evolved by random mutation and natural selection. Here, the authors present the evidence for an evolutionary origin of flagella.

Yasir Skeiky and Jerry Sadoff outline the current state of play in the development of effective vaccines againstMycobacterium tuberculosis. Promising strategies include the use of modified recombinant BCG, live attenuated M. tuberculosisand subunit vaccines alone or in prime?boost regimens to optimize immunity and vaccine safety.

When Anne Osbourn left her post as a plant biologist to take up a Dream Time Fellowship in the School of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, she was charged with the task of bringing science into daily lives and language through creative writing. Surprisingly, Anne turned not to prose, but to poetry. In this essay, she describes her sabbatical from science, which saw her establish the Science, Art and Writing (SAW) concept — an initiative that draws children to science using scientific images as inspiration for creative writing and art.