The 11th editor’s work on molecular chaperones has implications for neurodegenerative diseases.

The National Institutes of Health plans to fund national cryo-electron microscopy facilities to give biologists better access to the method.

Douglas Robinson of Johns Hopkins University honored for helping disadvantaged high-school students.

The discovery of an enzyme led researchers to a rare disease that involves linear ubiquitin chains.

Carolyn Bertozzi isn't afraid to discuss "the petty humiliations of life" on social media.

Certain questions are illegal to ask during job interviews. But some female job candidates still get asked about marital status, children and other matters that are off-limits during interviews for tenure-track faculty positions.

In this Q&A, Christine Pfund of the University of Wisconsin–Madison describes why improving mentorship in the sciences so crucial.

A medical geneticist whose whole-exome sequencing of a 17-year-old girl and her parents revealed a mutation responsible for a rare genetic disease creates a team of strangers to move research on the mutation forward.

Microbiologist and MacArthur prize winner Sarkis Mazmanian is at the forefront of work on gut–brain connections. He also travels each year to Armenia to teach and bring 21st-century science to his ancestral homeland.

The organelles aren’t just trash cans. As researchers now appreciate, lysosomes do much more for the cell’s well-being.

Timothy Karr, a visiting scientist at the Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan and an adjunct professor at Arizona State University, recently joined the MCP as an associate editor.

Fyodor Urnov at Sangamo BioSciences helped coin the phrase "genome editing."

A rare Q&A with Hannah Valantine, the first chief officer for scientific workforce diversity at the National Institutes of Health.

We take a close look at the goals of the National Institutes of Health's Human Placenta Project, what we do and don't know about this mysterious organ, and how efforts to study the placenta could lead to a better understanding of miscarriage.

What if you were told that a single proton or electron can influence the behavior of an entire biological molecule? Would you snort with derision or give the idea some serious thought?

Claes Dohlman established the basis for current clinical practice in corneal science. His son Henrik Dohlman at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says his father is also a paragon of hard work and kindness.

Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay writes about the complex legal pathway to work for foreign scientists in the U.S.

Francis Collins doesn’t need an introduction to the biomedical research community. Before he became the 16th director to take the helm of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health in 2009, Collins served as directo…

How is the cell’s interior organized? That is the question that has interested Michael Rosen at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas since he started out as an independent researcher.

Peter Walter's lab has been at the forefront of identifying the machinery and mechanisms that oversee protein synthesis, folding and targeting as well as the signaling relays that allow organelles to communicate with each other.

The Harvard professor is one of the pioneers in the field of super-resolution microscopy, which overcomes the problem of the diffraction limit in optical microscopy.

Success in science comes when you stick with what you personally find most interesting, says the Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Jared Rutter at the University of Utah got hooked on cell metabolism early in his career. His laboratory focuses on understanding the dynamic nature of cell metabolism.

The light-based technique known as optogenetics has caused a revolution in the field of neuroscience. Now biologists are using it to better understand basic cellular processes. Read chief science correspondent Raj Mukhopadhyay's cover story. 

Patrick Sung at Yale University studies how cells repair double-stranded breaks in DNA.

As a teenager, Raymond Cypess cut his teeth in business at his father’s bakery. These days, Cypess applies that business education as the current chair and chief executive officer of American Type Culture Collection, better known as ATCC.

Researchers in California decided to see how centrifuge speed affects high-density lipoproteins. 

A rare brain tumor kills 250 children every year in North America. But the discovery of a mutation in an unexpected gene has given researchers new drug targets and brings hope that someday this cancer can be tamed.

How did a Chinese immigrant who once studied neurotransmitters in fruit flies wind up on stage telling jokes at the expense of the second-highest ranking U.S. official? According to comedian Joe Wong, delivering jokes and getting data have more in c…

With the analytical mind of a scientist, Jaffe is part of a new generation of baseball scribes more interested in using objective statistics than hagiographic mythology in their reporting and commentary.

Once the head of an oncogene research laboratory, novelist Stephanie Laurens has chartered an unusual career path to become one of the most successful romantic fiction authors today.

A select group of women with training in STEM and successful careers demonstrate that there is more to cheerleading than glitz and glamour.

He poured his scientific training into the development of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

Bonnie L. Bassler has been at the center of attention since 2002, when she received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, also known as the “genius award.”

Researchers are trying to figure out if extracellular vesicles containing RNA represent a new way for cells to communicate. ASBMB Today's science writer, Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay, reports.

ASBMB's Geoffrey Hunt and Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay continue our "Defying stereotypes" series with this profile of Olympic runner Nick Symmonds.

Kevin Grevioux, star of the “Underworld” movie series, moved from a laboratory to an actor’s trailer.

With a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, film director Mark Levinson’s résumé stands out from his Hollywood peers’

George Todaro is the scientist behind the NIH 3T3 cell line, a mainstay of cell biology.

For Raven Hanna, the motivation to launch a science-themed jewelry company came from a dark place.

Michelle Grey aims to develop initiatives that bring together science with the arts into one synergistic experience for the Neuehouse patrons.

Researchers at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum want to advance the genomics of as many life forms on Earth as possible, but first they need to figure out the small details that will make or break the effort.

Thalidomide is a molecule with a split personality. Notorious as the drug that caused thousands of babies to be born with grotesque deformities in the 1950s, it now has become the frontline defense for some cancer and immune-compromised patients.

Beauty. Glamour. Style. Miss America 2014 Nina Davuluri has these qualities in abundance. She also has a degree in brain behavior and cognitive science.

Michael Weiss at Case Western Reserve University is working on developing an ultra heat-stable insulin analog that doesn’t require refrigeration.  

Whether fronting the punk-rock band Bad Religion or delivering a lecture on evolution, Greg Graffin challenges his audiences to question convention.

Milo Aukerman is both a molecular biologist and the lead singer of the punk-rock band Descendents.

Dexter Holland, the lead singer of the punk-rock band The Offspring, has a lot of different interests. One of them is biology.

In this 2014 profile, Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay writes about Jennifer Doudna’s pioneering work on CRISPR and her partnership with her lab manager, Kaihong Zhou.

Are we getting enough vitamin D? The answer, it seems, depends upon which expert you ask. In this cover story, science writer Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay explores a longstanding controversy over the dietary recommendations for vitamin D.

Norman Lewis at Washington State University began his scientific career as a natural product chemist. But his interests soon turned toward the biochemistry of plants.

The venom of the female jewel wasp renders her victims docile so that her offspring can feast. Scientists wonder if this strange brew might teach us a thing or two about human neurobiology.

John Denu at the University of Wisconsin-Madison joined the ranks of The Journal of Biological Chemistry associate editors in July 2014.

The University of California, San Francisco., researcher talks about his research on the dynamics of protein expression from single genomes.

With a mortality rate of up to 100 percent, white spot syndrome virus can take out entire populations of shrimp — and economies.

ASBMB Today science writer Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay interviewed Roger Colbran, who became an associate editor for The Journal of Biological Chemistry in September. In this Q&A, Colbran talks about his scientific interests, his career path from the Un…

Her laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute focuses on the roles of the actin cytoskeleton in cell architecture and physiology in organs such as muscle, blood and eyes.

Biomedical illustrator Jennifer Fairman uses illustrations and schematics to convey the complexity of molecular biology and medical topics.

In January 2013, Eric Fearon at the University of Michigan Medical School joined the ranks of the associate editors at The Journal of Biological Chemistry. Fearon has a longstanding interest in the molecular mechanisms underlying colorectal cancer.

ASBMB Today science writer Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay gives thanks to someone who helped her navigate her first serious academic failure.

Hudson Freeze, a recipient of the 2013 Golden Goose award for his discovery of a special bacterium and a world expert in glycosylation disorders, is said to go “beyond just science.”

Alex Toker at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School is an associate editor for the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Since its inception in 1981, the glycemic index — a measure of the changes in blood-glucose levels in response to the consumption of a food containing carbohydrates — has been a source of contention.

Jeffrey Pessin, director of the Diabetes Research Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is now an associate editor at The Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Proteins carry signals and cargo, package and replicate DNA, give cells their shapes, break down and take up nutrients, and much more. But how often do we stop to ask: How did these diverse and sophisticated molecular machines come to be?

These researchers have maintained simultaneous scientific endeavors in two parts of the world. Their motivations for doing so are all over the map.

“I never really had a role model,” said Virginia M-Y Lee, director at the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research at the University of Pennsylvania.

For some spider species, love definitely is in the air. These arthropods emit sex pheromones, which are volatile compounds, to communicate with prospective mates, initiate courtship and accept partners.

Steve Caplan of the University of Nebraska Medical Center shares how he became a scientist, novelist and blogger.

While an assisted reproduction technique has helped create and change lives, concern is growing that its success has stymied fundamental research into the causes of male infertility.

As caregivers grapple with the grim changes in their loved ones, researchers race to stall this neurodegenerative disorder. For this cover story, ASBMB Today science writer Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay talked to caregivers and scientists.

Researchers turn their attention to Plasmodium vivax, an ill understood parasite that causes most malaria cases outside of Africa.

Jeremy Nicholson of Imperial College London is heading up the U.K.’s government-funded phenome center, which will undertake population-scale metabolic phenotyping and profiling.

In 1991, dentist-biochemist Bruce Baum, stuck in a boring lecture, began to sketch out an idea he had for treating dry-mouth syndrome. Twenty years later, the idea came to fruition.

The Yale immunologist is an associate editor for the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Is a particular dietary recommendation harming people in the U.S.? For almost 20 years, scientists have been arguing over whether Americans and others on a typical Western diet are eating too much of omega-6s, a class of essential fatty acids.

In the early 1900s, dietary fat was viewed simply as a source of calories, interchangeable with carbohydrates. But in 1929 and 1930, a husband-and-wife team published two papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry that turned the notion on its he…

Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay profiles Walter Shaw of Avanti Polar Lipids.

Find out about Berg's views on the changing landscape of biochemistry and molecular biology, his advice for science students and how his family has influenced his career. 

With help from his mother, Michael Snyder takes personal profiling via -omics to a whole new level.

George Stark contributed to the development of both Western and Northern blotting and co-discovered gene amplification in mammalian cells and the JAK-STAT signaling cascade. 

Cheating athletes manipulate various aspects of molecular biology and medicine to improve their performance. ASBMB Today science writer Raj Mukhopadhyay covers the increasingly sophisticated techniques of sports doping and detection.    

Robert Schimke ditched pipettes and gels for paintbrushes and canvases.

How should the massive quantities of -omics data being produced today be validated?

The University of Toronto professor became an associate editor for the Journal of Biological Chemistry in 2011. Before that, he served as an editorial board member for more than eight years.

Philip Leder talks about the genetic code experiments that he began 50 years ago.

Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay reports on how academic and industrial researchers are pursuing efficiencies, automation and higher throughput.

The postdoc who invented the Western blot went on to become an early Amgen employee and lifelong Army reservist. Science writer Raj Mukhopadyay talks to W. Neal Burnette about his seminal contribution and career since.

Billy Hudson embraced the opportunities afforded him to direct his path toward success. He knew the path the rural children were headed down. Read about Hudson’s initiative to bring STEM education to rural school children.

Whether you think synthetic biology is simply a more sophisticated form of genetic engineering might be beside the point. Synthetic biology is moving beyond proof-of-principle methodology and is looking toward providing benefits in the clinic.