The p53 Family

Written and edited by experts in the field, this volume provides a comprehensive review of the functions of the p53 family. The contributors examine the normal roles of these transcription factors, the regulatory mechanisms that control p53 activity, and the part played by p53 mutations in tumorigenesis. They also discuss the evolution of the p53 family, which may originally have arisen to protect the integrity of the germ line.

The Origins of Life

This volume provides a comprehensive account of the environment of the early Earth and describes how the first self-replicating systems emerged from prebiotic chemistry and evolved into primitive cell-like entities.

Experimental Heart: A Novel

“Jennifer Rohn is famous for promoting the idea that we need more fiction with realistic scientists in leading roles, via her website lablit.com, and other outlets including Nature. In an effort to practice what she preaches, she has written a couple of “lablit” novels herself, of which Experimental Heart is the debut effort.

As the “lablit” label suggests, the lab, located in an academic research centre in London, and the science conducted there (and in a small biotech company next door) play very important parts in the novel. It’s not just that the ambitions of a slightly mad scientist drive the plot, the scientific agenda also shapes the encounters of the characters, and science metaphors colour their speech and indeed the voice of the narrator...

To me, as someone who has grown up, lived, and worked in the science culture that this story is set in, the whole thing feels completely like home—sometimes even too close for comfort. The lab part aside, the lit part is also very nicely done, written fluently and convincingly, though not letting the style get in the way of the science...

I am certainly looking forward to the second novel, due out this autumn.”

Genes and Chromosomes: Structure and Organization
(CSH Symposium, Vol. IX, 1941)

Just as Eric Ponder had chosen his own field of research for the topic of his last Symposium, so Demerec did the same for his first Symposium. But although the title of the 1941 Symposium suggests that Demerec had broken with the biophysical emphasis of the earlier Symposia, the studies reported in this meeting relied heavily on biophysical approaches and techniques.

Hundreds of important advances in biology were announced, debated, and distilled at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposia. These meetings, held each year on the tranquil grounds of one of the world’s leading research institutes, have been notable events in biomedical research since 1933. Now this essential archive, dating from 1933 to 2003, is available online. Among highly influential volumes is the 1941 meeting “Genes and Chromosomes: Structure and Organization” (Vol. IX), above is an excerpt from the exclusive new online introduction to this volume. (read more)

Evolution: The Molecular Landscape
(CSH Symposia on Quantitative Biology, Vol. LXXIV)

This book presents the latest advances in research into evolution, with a focus on the molecular bases for evolutionary change.

Career Opportunities in Clinical Drug Research

This book is an easy-to-follow handbook that introduces readers to entry-level clinical job opportunities and explains how to qualify for them, with a particular emphasis on how to gain “clinical experience” that a hiring manager will accept.

A new type of online review journal

• Spanning the complete spectrum of the molecular life sciences

• Article collections that build month by month

• Written and commissioned by experts in each field

Read these essential papers in this month’s issue:

Irene Chen and Peter Walde discuss the evolution of protocells from vesicles.
Self-assembled vesicles are essential components of primitive cells. We review the importance of vesicles during the origins of life, fundamental thermodynamics and kinetics of self-assembly, and experimental models of simple vesicles, focusing on prebiotically plausible fatty acids and their derivatives. We review recent work on interactions of simple vesicles with RNA and other studies of the transition from vesicles to protocells. Finally we discuss current challenges in understanding the biophysics of protocells, as well as conceptual questions in information transmission and self-replication. Read the full text

DNA pumps—Briana Burton and David Dubnau on the machines driving transformation and conjugation.
DNA pumps play important roles in bacteria during cell division and during the transfer of genetic material by conjugation and transformation. The FtsK/SpoIIIE proteins carry out the translocation of double-stranded DNA to ensure complete chromosome segregation during cell division. In contrast, the complex molecular machines that mediate conjugation and genetic transformation drive the transport of single stranded DNA. The transformation machine also processes this internalized DNA and mediates its recombination with the resident chromosome during and after uptake, whereas the conjugation apparatus processes DNA before transfer. This article reviews these three types of DNA pumps, with attention to what is understood of their molecular mechanisms, their energetics and their cellular localizations. Read the full text

Susan Pierce examines B cell receptor signaling.
B-cell responses are initiated by the binding of foreign antigens to the clonally distributed B-cell receptors (BCRs) resulting in the triggering of signaling cascades that activate a variety of genes associated with B-cell activation. Although we now understand the molecular nature of the signaling pathways in considerable detail what remains only poorly understood are the mechanisms by which the information that antigen has bound to the BCR ectodomain is transduced across the B-cell membrane to the BCR cytoplasmic domains to trigger signaling. To a large part this gap in knowledge is because of the paucity of techniques to temporally and spatially resolve changes in the behavior of the BCR that occur within several seconds of antigen binding. With the advent of new live-cell imaging technologies we are gaining our first clear views of the events that lead up to the triggering of BCR signaling cascades. These events may provide potential new targets for therapeutic intervention in disease involving hyper or chronic activation of B cells. Read the full text

Visit here for this month’s complete table of contents and to learn more.