TRENDS in Cell Biology Vol.11 No.6 June 2001

http://tcb.trends.com 0962-8924/01/$ – see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

243News&Comment

training in communication, with only 10%having had specific training in dealing withthe media. While 70% of scientistsquestioned believe that their work hadsignificant social or ethical implications, it isperhaps somewhat alarming that 7% didnot feel that theyhad a duty to communicatethis to the general public.

A further key finding was that scientistslargely distrust the role of the mass mediain communication of their results. Clearly,it is up to scientists to ensure that morepositive, and less negative, reporting ofscience happens. The study highlights thenecessity for continuing current high-levelprojects aimed at improving the dialoguebetween the scientific establishment andthe nonspecialist public. D.S.

AMC honors Arnold Levine

Arnold Levine is the first person to beawarded the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research. The half-million dollar price honors hisoeuvre on the p53 tumor-suppressor gene.Levine was involved in cloning p53 back in1983 and has since attempted to unravelthe mysteries around this king of cancergenes. Formerly working at PrincetonUniversity, Levine moved to RockefellerUniversity, New York, in 1998 to become itsnew director. Levine’s decoration marksthe start of a yearly event initiated byMorris Silverman, a New York Stateresident who donated a hefty $50 million tothe Albany Medical Center. $500 000 is tobe awarded yearly over the next 100 years,making it the biggest medical prize of thecountry and second worldwide only to the Nobel Prize. The Albany Medical Centerhomepage (http://www.amc.edu) reportsthat the prize is ‘to encourage andrecognize extraordinary and sustainedcontributions to improving healthcare andpromoting innovative biomedicalresearch.’ Candidates for next year’s award can be nominated to the Selection Committee, and there are norestrictions on the number of people or nationality. J.d.B.

Rushing to fill scientificpositions in CanadaThroughout its history, Canada hasattracted adventurers from all over theworld in search of furs, oil or gold. But nowscientific information is the new resource.In response to this, the CanadianGovernment has started a scientificgold-rush by creating a Research ChairsProgram that is open to basic scientists ofany nationality. The numbers behind thisprogram are very impressive. By the year2005, universities and institutes in Canadawill have received 2000 new researchchairs in the natural and social sciencesand humanities. This will be supported byan investment of 4.1 billion dollars CNDand will increase the total number ofscientists in Canada from its current levelsby 30%. Some of the first chairs have goneto internationally renowned scientists suchas Tak Mak at the University of Toronto andW. Ford Doolittle at Dalhousie University.The program has reserved places foryoung scientists with ‘potential to lead intheir fields’. So – dig up your wool hat andmittens and head north. Perhaps one doesnot need to be as hardy as the earlyCanadians, but there is certainly a lot ofadventure ahead in this new search forscientific gold. R.M.G.

Chinese genomicsBiotechnology is set to become a key driver of economic and socialdevelopment in China. A number ofmeasures are being taken to ensure thatChina is a key player in globalbiotechnology. China is clearly rich innatural genetic resources (a population of1.2 billion, comprising 56 ethnic groups);however, this also creates great economicpressure – while having one fifth of theworld’s population, only 7% of worldwidearable land lies within its borders.According to a report in China’s People’sDaily newspaper, genetic modification ofcrops and livestock is seen by the country’slegislature as vital to further development.An industrial biotechnology park is underconstruction in Beijing, with Asia’s largestbiological engineering centre being built in Shenzhen in the south of the country.China is the only developing countryparticipating in the Human Genome Projectand is now keen to develop its currentgenome-sequencing capability to facilitatethe sequencing of microbial genomes. D.S.

New tools expand the geneticcodeNew strategies have been created forincorporating unnatural amino acids intothe proteins of bacteria. Observers expect that the work, published in the 20April issue of Science, will lead to noveldrugs, biomaterials and techniques forprobing protein function and structure. The new work promises to adapt the basictenet that the genetic code translates into20 amino acids. Two research groups have now designed separate strategies forincorporating into proteins amino acidsthat do not exist in nature.

By introducing a point mutation in aprotein that corrects amino acid sequence errors, Schemmel and Philippe Marliere of Gemoscope in Evry,France, and their colleagues believe theymight have found the mechanism thatplays a central role in restricting thegenetic code to 20 amino acids. Bydisabling this editing function, theydiscovered an approach that allows the cell to take up and incorporate novel amino acids into proteins. What surprisedSchemmel, he said, was that it was so easyto disable the editing function, which leads him to suspect that some humandiseases might be caused by such errors.

The other team, led by Peter Schultz of the Scripps Research Institute andNovartis Research Foundation of SanDiego, took a different approach thatinvolved creating a novel t-RNA synthaseto make site-specific alterations in aminoacid chains. An advantage of this technique is that it allows the replacement of natural amino acids withunnatural or novel residues that could beused to specifically probe the function,structure or movement of proteins inside cells. M.M.

News&Comment

This month’s ‘In brief’ articles were

written by:

Jan de Boer

deboer@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk Roy Golsteyn

roy.golsteyn@fr.netgrs.comDavid Stephens

david.stephens@EMBL-Heidelberg.deMelissa Mertl

melissa.mertl@ny.biomednet.com