Bin that Viagra
Men who received the highest doses of a pioneering form of gene therapy to treat erectile dysfunction experienced normal erections for the entire six-week study. Volunteers were injected once in the penis with loops of DNA containing hSlo, a gene that relaxes penile muscle cells enabling blood to engorge the penis (Human Gene Therapy, vol 18, p 1165).
Celebrating Carl Linnaeus
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It will be a year for the animals and plants. On 7 December 12 months of celebrations begin, marking the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, who invented the binomial system for naming biological organisms. Events will be organised by The Linnean Society of London, the UK鈥檚 national academy for biology and the oldest such organisation in the world.
Mouse mind mapped
Patterns of gene activity across the entire mouse brain have been mapped, showing for the first time which genes operate in different parts of the brain. The 鈥淎llen Brain Atlas鈥� of some 20,000 mouse genes has been compiled by Ed Lein and colleagues at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Washington (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature05453).
Ice ice baby
A healthy baby boy has been born in Spain after the embryo from which he developed had spent 13 years in cryopreservation, beating the previous record by a year. The success will bolster claims that frozen embryos can remain viable for unlimited periods of time.
Ice ice shelf
The size of the world鈥檚 largest ice shelf has fluctuated wildly over the last 10 million years. Sediments extracted from the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic show that it disappears and reappears in cycles. The ongoing international drilling project will help researchers understand how stable the shelf is.