Word: molecular
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...genetic changes take place. Cell geneticists, studying chromosomes, the discrete units into which genes are packaged, have begun to associate specific abnormalities-an extra chromosome, a missing piece of a chromosome-with specific types of cancer. Virologists have clarified the role that viruses can play in altering DNA. And molecular biologists have used the new tools of genetic engineering to pinpoint precisely which gene, out of the tens of thousands present in every human cell, is responsible for causing a tumor...
...important function. "God knows, they haven't been conserved through evolution just to make tumors," says Varmus. These genes may play a role during fetal development and then become quiescent, unless activated or altered by carcinogens or cancer viruses. They start out as "normal, good genes," explains Molecular Biologist Robert Weinberg of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "but they become damaged during an individual's lifetime. When damaged, they assume a new role: directing the cell to grow abnormally...
Klug, an acutely modest and private man (his first thought was to buy a bicycle with his Nobel money), was born in Lithuania, grew up in South Africa, and has been with the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge since 1962. His most recent work has been on the structure of nucleosomes. These are the fundamental subunits of chromosomes, the repository of the genes in the heart of cells. Klug's structural studies have broad implications, possibly even for an understanding of cancer, which occurs when the genetic machinery goes awry...
Anderson's research focuses on the effect of free radicals-fragments of molecules that are extremely reactive and can destroy ozone by converting it back into molecular oxygen-on the stratosphere...
Recent findings by a team of Harvard Medical School scientists linking the genetics of the immune system to cancer growth are formidable contribution to the field of molecular genetics, but do not necessarily presage a cure for cancer, medical experts said yesterday...