Word: molecular
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...solved the mystery. The virus that the donor contracted and then passed on, the team reported last week in Science, contains flaws in its genetic script that appear to have rendered it innocuous. "Not only have the recipients and the donor not progressed to disease for 15 years," marvels molecular biologist Nicholas Deacon of Australia's Macfarlane Burnet Centre for Medical Research, "but the prediction is that they never will." Deacon speculates that this "wimpy" HIV may even be a natural inoculant that protects its carriers against more virulent strains of the virus, much as infection with cowpox warded...
...gene could perform any useful function. And sure enough, while the Sydney virus retains the ability to infect T cells--white blood cells that are critical to the immune system's ability to ward off infection--it makes so few copies of itself that the most powerful molecular tools can barely detect its presence. Some of the infected Australians, for example, were found to carry as few as one or two copies of the virus for every 100,000 T cells. People with aids, by contrast, are burdened with viral loads thousands of times higher...
...next step for the researchers is to locate the precise gene or genes involved and attempt to determine their biochemical effects. Will finding such "gay genes" rule out the idea that social and psychological influences can have a significant effect on a man's sexual preference? "Absolutely not," declares molecular biologist Dean Hamer of the National Cancer Institute, who headed both the 1993 investigation and the new one. "From twin studies, we already know that half or more of the variability in sexual orientation is not inherited. Our studies try to pinpoint the genetic factors, not to negate the psychosocial...
John F. Codington, an associate professor of biological chemistry and molecular, pharmacology and a senior scientist at the Harvard affiliated Boston Biomedical Research Institute, says Boston Biomed has granted the biotechnology company Epigen the commercial right to use the antigens and antibodies that he developed and the right to prepare a diagnostic test he developed for commercialization...
Jack L. Strominger, Higgins professor of biochemistry and former chair of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology, agrees that the impact on teaching is "positive and enormous...