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Flexible approach allows cancer researchers to change course mid-trial according to patient response.

Congresswoman seeks legislation to provide grant extensions for federally funded scientists who need extended family leave.

High-throughput gene sequencing seems to be stealing a march on microarrays. Heidi Ledford looks at a genome technology facing intense competition.

A fast way of isolating antibodies from people has been used to create a library of the immune proteins produced by someone inoculated with a nicotine-acting vaccine. Roger Beerli and his team at Cytos Biotechnology in Schlieren, Switzerland, used lymphocytes from an individual who was enrolled in a clinical trial of the smoking-cessation vaccine, and with their technique rapidly identified nicotine-specific antibodies1 .

Biologists hope insight into cell differentiation and communication will transfer to humans.

Massive collection of transgenic Drosophila spreads its wings. Take one complete genome sequence (Drosophila Release 4.3 in this instance), generate interfering RNA transgenes from its predicted protein-coding genes (88% coverage was achieved), and you have a very powerful tool. A team centred on the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna has produced and validated a genome-wide tissue-specific Drosophila RNAi library that will facilitate rapid loss-of-function genetic screens, making it possible to study gene functions in essentially any tissue or cell at any stage in the life of the organism. The library will pave the way for work in many fields — including behaviour, sleep, learning, pathology and ageing — that were previously inaccessible to the kind of systematic genetic analysis successfully applied in developmental biology.