A University of California, San Francisco-led team interrogated SNPs in 17 candidate genes as part of its search for genetic and other factors contributing to lymphedema risk in women treated for breast cancer. As they report in PLOS One, the researchers unearthed lymphedema-associated variants in four lymphatic and/or blood vessel formation-related genes after testing more than 150 breast cancer patients with lymphedema and 387 breast cancer patients without the lymphatic blockage condition. Along with the apparent risk variants, the team notes that women with more lymph nodes removed during treatment appeared to be at higher-than-usual lymphedema risk. So, too, were those who were heavier and/or had later stage breast cancers.

In PLOS Genetics, researchers from Ireland, the UK, Canada, and France describe findings from a genome sequencing-based analysis of Salmonella enterica. By sequencing 73 isolates of a S. enterica serovar called Agona — collected during five foodborne infection outbreaks, from individuals or animals with sporadic infections, or from environmental sources — the team delved into details of past outbreaks and tallied up genetic diversity in the gastroenteritis-causing bug. For instance, their results suggest the outbreaks considered in the current study involved genetically different versions of S. enterica. Even so, outbreak strain diversity appeared to be lower than that predicted by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, which seems to pick up variation in the bug's accessory genome rather than from core sequences containing outbreak-related determinants.

The simian Treponema strain Fribourg-Blanc is most genetically similarly to the T. pallidum sub-species that causes yaws in humans, according to a study in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Investigators from Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and Washington University School of Medicine generated a high-quality genome sequence for the Fribourg-Blanc strain. When they compared the genome sequences for representatives from the T. pallidum sub-species that cause syphilis (pallidum) or yaws (pertenue), researchers found that the Fribourg-Blanc strain clustered most closely with the yaws-causing pertenue sub-species. "[W]e propose to rename the unclassified simian isolate to T. pallidum ssp. pertenue strain Fribourg-Blanc," authors of the study say, noting that "non-human primates could serve as possible reservoirs of [yaws-causing] strains."

With all the licking and petting, dogs and their owners share microorganisms. Dog ownership, writes Lisa Raffensperger at D-brief, may be a main factor influencing what microbes live on a person's skin.

In a new study, researchers led by the University of Colorado's Rob Knight examined the fecal, oral, and skin microbiota of 60 families with and without children or dogs. As they report in eLife, cohabitating partners shared many microbes, especially Prevotella and Veillonella, but people also had similar microbial communities as their dogs. Dogs, Raffensperger notes, harbor Methylophilaceae bacteria in their mouths that appear to make their way to dog owners' skin.

"It is intriguing to consider that who we cohabit with, including companion animals, may alter our physiological properties by influencing the consortia of microbial symbionts that we harbor in and on our various body habitats, and in particular, our skin habitats," Knight and his colleagues write.

The Spanish government is postponing the awarding of some scientific program grants, including for the Ramon y Cajal program that is designed to encourage Spanish and foreign researchers to work in Spain, reports the Nature News Blog. In addition, travel grants have been reduced. The blog adds that "940 positions for scientists and lab technicians with a total spending of €104 million" are at stake.

"The move has raised fears among junior and senior scientists that this could be an additional cut to the already battered science budget, which has gone through four years of continued reductions," the Nature News Blog writes.

The budget, according to the Confederation of Spanish Scientific Societies, has been cut by 7.2 percent for this year, and was slashed by 25.5 percent in 2012. According to the Nature News Blog, the Ramon y Cajal program has already been delayed and gone through a hiring freeze.

"We only expect to issue a provisional Ramón y Cajal grantee list after the summer," a spokesperson for the research secretary tells the Nature News Blog.

Diagnostics are a tough business, writes life sciences venture capitalist Bruce Booth.

And he should know — he's currently in the process of unwinding cancer diagnostics company On-Q-Ity, an investment by his firm, Atlas Ventures, that didn't quite work out.

The reading public is the beneficiary of Booth's loss, though, as he performs a post-mortem of sorts, looking at what went wrong.

Among the lessons learned:

"Crashing two Fords together doesn't make a Porsche," Booth writes of his team's effort to combine two biotech firms — one focused on circulating tumor cell detection and the other on DNA repair biomarkers — into a single venture.

"Tranche the capital." Apparently when you get all $26 million of your Series A funds at once, it can be hard not to spend it.

"Team, team, team." In other words, it helps to have a stable management team in place.

And, as noted above, "diagnostics aren't for the faint of heart."

"Despite the frothy commentary about personalized medicine and the dawn of diagnostics, it's a very tough business that faces many of the risks and costs of drug R&D but without the upside," Booth says.

A three-month prison sentence has been handed down to a UK researcher convicted of faking his results, Retraction Watch reports. Steven Eaton, the BBC adds, would be the first person to be jailed under a 1999 UK scientific safety law.

"I feel that my sentencing powers in this are wholly inadequate. You failed to test the drugs properly — you could have caused cancer patients unquestionable harm," Edinburgh Sheriff Michael O'Grady said, according to the BBC.

Eaton worked for the US-based Aptuit at its Riccarton, Scotland, branch (which has since closed) where he focused on anti-cancer drugs, but in 2009 his bosses noticed something amiss with his results and he was dismissed. They also reported him to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which investigated the case, the BBC adds, and found that Eaton had been selectively reporting results since 2003.

Aptuit notes in a statement that Eaton hasn't been associated with them for more than four years. "At the close of this investigation two years ago, Aptuit received a letter from the MHRA stating that the matter was concluded," the company says, "and that '…the investigation by the MHRA and GLPMA has found no evidence to suggest that the data integrity issues were caused as a result of actions taken by the company. The data integrity issues appear to have been caused by the independent actions of individual employees.'"

Retraction Watch notes that only a handful of researchers have been jailed for scientific misconduct. "Scott Reuben was sentenced to six months' prison for health care fraud and Eric Poehlman got a year and a day for faking a grant application. Luk Van Parijs was given six months of home detention and 400 hours of community service for fraud in papers," lists Adam Marcus at Retraction Watch.

Smaller scientific research budgets lead to less data being generated by scientists, not the "romantic ideas of a creative genius alone in a lab, struggling against the odds," writes Oxford University's Mark Stokes in the Guardian. Stokes, a neuroscientist, notes that a number of experiments in his field have been underpowered.

"Insufficient data inevitably comes down to a question of funding. Scientists love data, and they especially love lots of data," he writes. "But funding is always limited and expectations are always high — there are strong incentives to publish more for less."

However, Stokes says that increasing funding — as brain-mapping efforts in the US and Europe plan to do — is only part of the issue. The other part is the notion that doing science on the cheap is cost effective, he says. Poorly funded studies may be underpowered and full of false-positive results that could lead other researchers astray. "So yes, science needs more funding, but we also need to rethink how the available funds are allocated," Stokes writes. "If there is a genuine commitment to funding a particular experiment, then it is essential that enough money is allocated for that experiment to be carried out properly."