PROTEOMICS: T. Rex Protein Sequenced in Mass Spec Tour de Force
In a venture thought to lie outside the reach of science, HMS investigators have captured and sequenced tiny pieces of collagen protein from a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex. The protein fragments—seven in all—appear to most closely match amino acid sequences in collagen of the present day chicken, lending support to a recent and still controversial proposal that birds and dinosaurs are evolutionarily related. The findings by John Asara (front), Lewis Cantley, and colleagues appear in the April 13 Science.

GENETICS: New Risk Regions for Prostate Cancer Show Power of Genome Scanning Approach
Findings published online April 1 in Nature Genetics by David Reich and colleagues follow from his lab’s work with the genome scanning method admixture mapping and demonstrate its utility. The study identifies seven genetic variants among African-American men that raise risk for prostate cancer. Using the same technique, he and colleagues previously identified a genetic region that increases risk for multiple sclerosis. Admixture mapping is a shortcut to zero in on genetic risk areas involving diseases that vary across recently blended racial groups. Prostate cancer is more prevalent among African Americans while multiple sclerosis is more common among European Americans.

SYSTEMS BIOLOGY: Drug Combo Targets Resistant Bugs
Conventional wisdom holds that when bacteria are battling for survival under antibiotic treatment, resistance to a drug will always give a bug a competitive advantage. But a study by (from left) Remy Chait, Roy Kishony, and Allison Craney finds that under certain conditions, a combination of drugs could actually handicap resistant strains and give susceptible strains the advantage. This reversal of fortune, detailed in the April 5 Nature, so far is limited to bacteria growing in vitro, but it suggests a new avenue of research for pairing drugs together to counteract resistance in patients.