Scientists have discovered that adult neural stem cells, which exist in the brain throughout life, are not a single, homogeneous group. Instead, they are a diverse group of cells, each capable of giving rise to specific types of neurons.
Craig Venter's recent announcement that his J. Craig Venter Institute research team had successfully made one new bacterial species from another brought this reaction from UCSF's premier synthetic biologist, Christopher Voigt, PhD.
In the last 40 years, scientists have perfected ways to determine the knot-like structures of enzymes, but they've been stumped trying to translate the structure of enzymes into an understanding of their function – what they actually do in the body.