Sequencing and Analysis of the Hydra Genome
Chapman, Kirkness et al., Nature
An international research collaboration reports their sequencing and analysis of the Hydra magnipapillata genome, and compare it to the genomes of several other organisms. "The Hydra genome has been shaped by bursts of transposable element expansion, horizontal gene transfer, trans-splicing, and simplification of gene structure and gene content that parallel simplification of the Hydra life cycle," the authors write. They team suggests that comparisons of the Hydra genome to the reported sequences of other animals have helped them to elucidate the evolution of several of the organism's characteristics.
'You Cannot Use People'
November 24, 2008
Jay Katz, a psychoanalyst and Yale Law School professor, died last week of heart failure at the age of 86. During his career, Katz studied the conflicting interests of doctors and patients in medical research, writing the 1984 book The Silent World of Doctor and Patient. In the 1970s, Katz was on the panel investigating the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. "There is persistent confusion between research and [clinical] practice and the obfuscation of the two," Katz told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. "You cannot use people -- or you should not use people -- as means for others' ends and for ends that might ultimately even be good.'
