A conversation with John Sulston

Sir John Sulston was a co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2002. He won the prize for his discoveries concerning "genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death," along with his colleagues sydney Brenner and H. Robert Horvitz. Dr. Sulston was founding director of the Sanger Centre, Cambridge, England, which he headed from 1992 to 2000. From 1993 to 2000, he led the British arm of the international team selected to work on the Human Genome Project. He is co-author of the book The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics, and the Human Genome, published by Joseph Henry Press in 2002.This interview was conducted on December 20, 2002, shortly after Dr. Sulston was awarded his Nobel Prize and was originally broadcast on that date on radio station WPKN-FM in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The interview was conducted by Valerie Richardson, the Managing Editor of The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.Dr. Sulston has been an outspoken advocate against letting the data from the Human Genome Project become property of commercial interests that would charge the world's scientific community for its use. Since leaving the Sanger Institute, he has worked with OxFam, the Oxford Campaign for Famine Relief.     

A tribute to Dr. Gordon Hisashi Sato (December 24, 1927–March 31, 2017)

Gordon H. Sato, an innovator in mammalian tissue culture and integrated cellular physiology, passed away in 2017. In tribute to Dr. Sato, In Vitro Cellular and Developmental Biology—Animal presents a collection of invited remembrances from six colleagues whose associations with Dr. Sato spanned more than 40 years. Dr. Sato was a past president of the Tissue Culture Association (now the Society for In Vitro Biology), editor-in-chief of In Vitro Cellular and Developmental Biology (1987–1991), and the recipient of the lifetime achievement award from the Society for In Vitro Biology (2002). He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 1984.     

Q & A: Alexander Varshavsky

Alexander Varshavsky is Smits Professor of Cell Biology at the California Institute of Technology. He moved to Caltech in 1992, after 15 years at the MIT's Department of Biology. He was born and educated in Russia, and was 30 at the time of his emigration to the U.S. in 1977. In Russia, and for a while at MIT, he studied the structure and replication of chromosomes. Over the last 24 years, the work of his laboratory focused on the ubiquitin system and closely related fields. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and has received the Gairdner Award, the Lasker Award, the General Motors Sloan Prize, the Wolf Prize, the Horwitz Prize, and the Wilson Medal.     

Award of the G. Whitaker International Burns Prize for 2005 Palermo,Italy

Announcement

Award of the G. Whitaker International Burns Prize for 2005 Palermo, Italy     

Researchers hope to determine if link exists between high-fat diet,breast cancer

Ontario researchers hope a major study will determine conclusively if a link exists between high-fat diets and breast cancer. The study will involve about 4700 women in 4 centres. Some researchers think there is a link because the incidence for the disease is much higher in North America and northern Europe, where high-fat diets are common, than in Japan, where low-fat diets prevail. "At some point between now and 2005 we''ll definitely know [the answer]," says Dr. Norman Boyd, the principal investigator.     

Science – A life fully lived: Joe Sodroski wins the 2006 Retrovirology Prize

The 2006 M Jeang Retrovirology Prize for HIV research has been awarded to Dr Joe Sodroski     

A brief history of the Japan Society for Cell Biology

The Japan Society for Cell Biology (JSCB) was first founded in 1950 as the Japan Society for Cellular Chemistry under the vigorous leadership of Seizo Katsunuma, in collaboration with Shigeyasu Amano and Satimaru Seno. The Society was provisionally named as above simply because cell biology had not yet been coined at that time in Japan, although in prospect and reality the Society was in fact for the purpose of pursuing cell biology. Later in 1964, the Society was properly renamed as the Japan Society for Cell Biology. After this renaming, the JSCB made great efforts to adapt itself to the rapid progress being made in cell biology. For this purpose the Society's constitution was created in 1966 and revised in 1969. According to the revised constitution, the President, Executive Committee and Councils were to be determined by ballot vote. The style of the annual meetings was gradually modified to incorporate general oral and poster presentations in addition to Symposia (1969-1974). The publication of annual periodicals in Japanese called Symposia of the Japan Society for Cellular Chemistry (1951-1967) and later Symposia of the Japan Society for Cell Biology (1968-1974) was replaced by a new international journal called Cell Structure and Function initiated in 1975. This reformation made it possible for the Society to participate in the Science Council of Japan in 1975 and finally in 1993 to acquire its own study section of Cell Biology with grants-in-aid from the Ministry of Education and Science, Japan. The JSCB hosted the 3rd International Congress on Cell Biology (ICCB) in 1984 and the 3rd Asian-Pacific Organization for Cell Biology (APOCB) Congress in 1998, thus contributing to the international advancement of cell biology. Now the membership of JSCB stands at approximately 1,800 and the number of presentations per meeting is 300 to 400 annually. Although a good number of interesting and important findings in cell biology have been reported from Japan, the general academic activity of the JSCB is far less than one might expect. This is simply due the fact that academic activity in the field of cell biology in Japan is divided among several other related societies such as the Japan Society for Molecular Biology and the Japan Society for Developmental Biology, among others.     

PETALIFERA HABEI, A NEW SPECIES FROM JAPAN ADDENDUM

Since Petalifera habei was described in the Proceedings, 34,1, 12–18, April 1960, I have received from Dr. K. Babaa short account of the same species in Publ. Seto. mar. biol.Lab. 7, 3, 337–338. December, 1959, under the title "Thegenus Petalifera and a new species, P. ramosa, from Japan".I was unaware that Dr. Baba intended to describe it. As hispaper antedates mine, his name, Petalifera ramosa, must replaceP. Habei.     

Abstracts of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Willi Hennig Society

The 22nd annual meeting of the Willi Hennig Society was held at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, New York from July 20–24. There were 154 participants representing 15 countries and a total of 65 talks, 16 posters, and four software presentations. There were five symposia ranging from sequence alignment to worm biology to biogeography. As with Hennig 21 at Helsinki, there was strong student participation. Student posters represented 13 of the total 16 posters and 23 of 65 oral presentations were by students. Student presentations were part of all symposia. The strength and future of the Willi Hennig Society resides in the students and recent meetings indicate a healthy society for the future.
The Student Awards Committee consisted of Jonathan A. Coddington, Arnold G. Kluge and Gunilla Ståhls. The winners were Taran Grant, the Hennig Prize ($1000) for "Insertions and deletions in the evolution of equal-length DNA fragments"; Johannes Bergsten, the Brundin Prize ($500) for " Acilius Phylogeny (Coleoptera: Dytiscidae), Problems with Long-branch attraction and Morphological Intersexual Coevolution"; and A. R. Lindgren, the Rosen Prize ($250) for "A New Phylogeny of the Cephalopoda Using Total Evidence".     

The telomere story or the triumph of an open-minded research

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute has decided to award The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009 jointly to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak for the discovery of "how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase". This discovery had major impacts within the scientific community and led to intense research in this field. All the studies performed are now the bases for future investigations and stimulate the development of potential new therapies.     

新冠疫情下“细胞生物学”课程思政教学研究

立德树人是教育事业的根本任务,课程思政是将立德树人融入教育各环节、各领域的重要手段。"细胞生物学"既是现代生命科学的前沿分支学科之一,也是高校生命科学类专业的重要课程。该文在课程思政的背景下,选择新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情(简称:新冠疫情)为载体,以"细胞生物学"课程中"病毒的特征、入侵、增殖"为主线,从"教学内容的甄选"和"实施策略"两个方面着手,开展聚焦新冠疫情下"细胞生物学"课程思政教学的深入探讨。该研究旨在引导学生在研习专业知识的基础上,提升其科学素养、树立其正确的价值观,为侧重新冠疫情的课程思政研究提供重要参考。     

Biology in a gray box: targeting the emergent properties of protein complexes: 2011 Yale Chemical Biology Symposium

At the 2011 Yale Chemical Biology Symposium, Jason Gestwicki presented a novel yet intuitive approach to drug screening. This method, which he termed "gray box" screening, targets protein complexes that have been reconstituted in vitro. Therefore, the gray box screen can achieve greater phenotypic complexity than biochemical assays but avoids the need for target identification that follows cell-based assays. Dr. Gestwicki's research group was able to use the gray box screen to identify myricetin as an inhibitor of the DnaK-DnaJ chaperone complex. This review will discuss Dr. Gestwicki's approach to identifying DnaK-DnaJ inhibitors as well as where the gray box screen fits among traditional techniques in drug discovery.     

A tribute to Shinya Inoue and innovation in light microscopy

The 2003 International Prize for Biology was awarded to Shinya Inoue for his pioneering work in visualizing dynamic processes within living cells using the light microscope. He and his scientific descendants are now pushing light microscopy even further by developing new techniques such as imaging single molecules, visualizing processes in living animals, and correlating results from light and electron microscopy.     

In memoriam: Lauri Saxén (1927-2005)

Dr. Lauri "Tupu" Saxen died last October (2005) at the age of 78. He was a physician, a scientist, a photographer, a naturalist, a great story-teller and a man who enjoyed science enormously. His name has become synonymous with the Finnish school of Developmental Biology, a school that focuses on reciprocal inductive interactions during vertebrate organogenesis. But many biologists probably don't know the full extent of his importance to the field. A few years ago, I had the occasion to outline some of his contributions which are so varied and important that it is difficult to believe that they are the work of one person, and I have included them in this brief eulogy. One could divide his scientific contributions into five categories: (1) the threshold hypothesis of amphibian metamorphosis; (2) the double-gradient hypothesis of primary embryonic induction; (3) the analysis of reciprocal induction during kidney development; (4) the integration of developmental biology with epidemiology and (5) the maintenance of a national infrastructure for science.     

Staphylococcus aureus alpha-toxin-induced pores: Channel-like behavior in lipid bilayers and patch clamped cells

The conductance of pores induced by Staphylococcus aureus -toxin in Lettre cells has been compared to that in bilayers composed of synthetic lipids or Lettre cell membrane constituents. Previously described characteristics of toxin-induced conductance changes in lipid bilayers, namely rectification, voltage-dependent closure, and closure at low pH or in the presence of divalent cations (Menestrina, 1986) are displayed also in bilayers prepared from Lettre cell membranes and in patch clamped Lettre cells. It is concluded that endogenous proteins do not affect the properties of -toxininduced channels significantly and that the relative lack of ion channels in Lettre cells makes them ideal for studies of pore-forming toxins by the patch clamp technique.Dr. Sviderskaya is on leave of absence from the Physiology Institute, University of St. Petersburg, RussiaWe are grateful to Dr. J.P. Arbuthnott and Dr. K. Hungerer for gifts of S. aureus -toxin, to Dr. T.B. Bolton for collaboration with patch clamped cells and to Dr. J.M. Graham for help with the preparation of Lettre cell plasma membranes. This study was supported by the Cell Surface Research Fund, Medical Research Council, Science and Engineering Research Council, UNESCO (Molecular and Cell Biology Network) and The Wellcome Trust.     

Selman A. Waksman,Winner of the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine

The history of the discovery and development of streptomycin is reviewed here from the personal standpoint of a member of Dr. Selman Waksman''s antibiotic screening research team. The team approach of eight individuals illustrates how the gradual enhancement of the screening methodology was developed. I illustrate three study periods with key aspects in the development of streptomycin which led to a Nobel Prize being granted to Professor Waksman. One item not previously emphasized is the employment of a submerged culture technique for large-scale production of streptomycin, thus enabling rapid animal testing and human clinical trials with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Another is that purified streptomycin was shown by Dr. Waksman to be distinctly different from the substances called natural products, which are no longer patentable in the United States; therefore, streptomycin was found to be patentable. A third item not previously emphasized is his emphasis on the screening of actinomycetes, including the newly named Streptomyces genus. All of these factors contributed to the success of streptomycin in the treatment of tuberculosis. In combination, their successes led to Dr. Waksman''s department becoming a new pharmacological research area, specializing in drug discovery. These unique accomplishments all burnish the prior rationales used by the Karolinska Institute in granting Dr. Waksman alone the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.     

Prostate cancer pathology, screening, and epidemiology

Recent advances in the understanding of prostate cancer pathology, screening methods, and epidemiology were discussed at the 11th International Prostate Cancer Update. Regarding pathology, Dr. Gary Miller enumerated several factors that lead to the perception of prostate cancer as "unpredictable." These include the disease's multifocal nature, variable progression rates, and the uncertainty regarding the point at which carcinomas metastasize. Screening methods have been the subject of research by the Laval University Prostate Cancer Screening Program since 1988. Dr. Fernand Labrie presented the results of this 10-year study. Dr. Daisaku Hirano presented data from his studies of prostate cancer epidemiology in Japan as compared to the United States. The role of environmental factors, particularly diet, in prostate cancer pathogenesis and development is supported by the increase of the disease in Japan, concurrent with the "westernization" of diet there. Finally, useful information was presented on new computer- and Internet-based diagnostic and research tools.     

核糖体的结构与功能研究——2009年诺贝尔化学奖简介

一系列高分辨率的核糖体及其30 S、50 S亚基的晶体结构揭示了这个极其复杂的蛋白质翻译机器的重要作用机理,对在分子水平上了解生命机体产生和形成的一个基本环节(蛋白质合成)具有重大意义,同时为新型抗生素的设计与研发开辟了新方向新途径,对人类健康与生命保障具有重要作用．