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Tighter visa restrictions are making it harder for foreign researchers to work in the United States. What's the effect on science—and scientists?

Using yeast as a testing ground, Whitehead researchers have for the first time revealed all the “controlling elements” of an entire genome—findings that may soon contribute to a new way of understanding human health and disease.

The same characteristics that make misfolded proteins known as prions such a pernicious medical threat in neurodegenerative diseases may offer a construction toolkit for manufacturing nanoscale electrical circuits, researchers report this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Susan L. Lindquist, director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, is best known for ground-breaking work on how such diverse processes as stress tolerance, neurodegenerative disease, and heredity can be governed by changes in protein conformation.

Scientists at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have discovered a glue-like protein in fruit flies that ensures proper partitioning of hereditary material and could shed new light on the origin of some of the most common human birth defects, including Down syndrome. Dr. Terry Orr-Weaver and her colleagues describe the new protein, called MEI-S332, and its role in sexual reproduction in the October 20 issue of Cell.

Scientists have created a new strain of mice lacking cyclin D1, a vital component of the growth machinery in all cells, and found that knocking out this important cog causes surprisingly little damage. These results have implications for treating human breast cancer and should lead to a better understanding of the molecular basis of cancer. The study, reported in the August 25 issue of Cell, was carried out in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Weinberg, a cancer research pioneer at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.