An Impressive Jump In Efficiency

The limiting factor in much of modern biomedical research - beyond government interference, that is - is the rate at which biochemical mechanisms, compounds and genes of interest can be identified as starting points or linked to medical conditions. Given such a starting point, research is startlingly fast, but obtaining that starting point can be slow indeed. So this news from EurekAlert is a very welcome and impressive advance: researchers have "developed a method that could speed up the process of identifying novel protein molecules for medical or biological research hundreds of times over. ... Searches that now take a year to complete can be done in a matter of days. ... The results from a screen completed in one afternoon were equivalent to those previously obtained through several rounds of mutation and screening - a several-month process."

Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-02/acft-wtc020206.php

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