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JUNE 14, 2004
Edited by Catherine Arnst POWER Ceramic Wire That Carries Double The Juice Summertime heat waves are around the corner, and power troubles won't be far behind. But when utilities turn down the juice, it usually has nothing to do with the capacity of their power lines. It's done to prevent the power lines from drooping as the power load rises, risking failure if a line touches tree branches or another line. 3M (MMM ) engineers think they can fix the droop threat with a new composite wire. High-voltage lines are typically made of aluminum wire wrapped around a steel cable. The more electricity that passes through a line, the more the steel cable heats up and expands, especially on hot summer days. 3M's answer: a strong-as-steel cable made of a ceramic composite of aluminum oxide. Since it expands only slightly, the material should allow wires to carry two to three times as much juice, says Tracy L. Anderson, a 3M program manager. By Michael Arndt BIOTECH Siccing A Souped-Up Common Cold On Cancer The common cold virus may prove to be another weapon in the war against cancer. Dr. William S. M. Wold of St. Louis University School of Medicine has genetically engineered the adenovirus to attack and kill colon and lung cancer cells while leaving normal tissue alone. Wold's research team reported in the May 17 issue of Cancer Research that they had modified the adenovirus in two ways. The scientists changed one gene so that the virus could recognize and grow only in cancer cells with certain mutations. They tinkered with the second gene to boost its activity so that it disrupts the infected cells. In the laboratory, one such reengineered virus efficiently killed cultured colon cancer cells but not lung cancer cells, while a second one killed both. In animal experiments, both variations suppressed tumor growth more efficiently than a control and did not harm healthy tissue. Wold has been developing his adenovirus approach to cancer for some 30 years and received a patent for his work last fall. He has licensed the technology to Introgen Therapeutics in Austin, Tex., and says he hopes to begin testing his viruses in human trials, though no timetable has been set.   GENETICS Genes Do Lots More Than Make Proteins One of the central dogmas of biology has been that genes do their work in cells by making proteins. But more and more, that view seems simplistic. In the past few years, researchers have found genes that seem to produce only RNA -- the messenger molecule that carries instructions from genes to the protein factories. Now, scientists at Harvard Medical School have found a gene in yeast that turns on and off another normal, protein-producing gene without making any protein itself. And it's located in a region of DNA long considered "junk," a genetic wasteland. "It was a surprise," says Harvard geneticist Fred Winston. "Biology is certainly more complex and sophisticated in ways we hadn't anticipated." Winston and his colleagues report on this discovery in the June 3 issue of Nature. If common, the phenomenon means that organisms may possess many more active genes than previously thought -- and that altering disease pathways with drugs may be even more challenging than researchers had expected. By John Carey Innovations Cheaper LEDs, tracking thugs, and toxicity tests that don't harm lab critters. -- Let there be (cheap) light! Light-emitting diodes last, on average, 20 times as long as regular bulbs but are far more expensive to make. Researchers at Britain's University of Bath have developed an LED that would cut costs in half by using gallium nitride instead of sapphire as a key material. -- British university scientists have teamed up with researcher Sira to crack crime. The group was awarded $680,000 by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council to devise a way to compile data such as license plates and faces of known criminals from closed-circuit footage of crime scenes. The police now trawl archives by hand. -- Sometimes scientific progress can serve both industrial and humane interests. A European Commission department has developed four chemical toxicity tests that are carried out on human skin cells instead of live animals. The new method could cut animal experiments in Europe by 6% -- and it's 50% cheaper than animal testing. By Adeline Bonnet
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