[
Science,
2002]
As any homeowner knows, timely maintenance is vital for keeping a building functioning properly after construction is finished. The same is evidently true for the complex architecture of the nervous system - at least in the roundworm. On page 686, neuroscientists Oliver Hobert, Oscar Aurelio, and David Hall describe a new family of proteins that help keep the wiring of the worm's nervous system tangle free.
[
Nature,
1994]
On page 32 of this issue, a joint team from the Genome Sequencing Center (St. Louis, USA) and the newly founded Sanger Centre (Hinxton Hall, Cambridge, UK) report a contiguous sequence of over two megabases from chromosome III of the nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans. This is the longest contiguous DNA sequence yet determined, and it prompts rumination on how far we have come in the sequencing enterprise, and on how far - and where - we have
[
Esquire,
1985]
In the end, it is attention to detail that makes all the difference. It's the center fielder's extra two steps to the left, the salesman's memory for names, the lover's phone call, the soldier's clean weapon. It is the thing that separates the men from the boys, and, very often, the living from the dead. Professional success depends on it, regardless of the field. But in big-time genetic research, attention to detail is more than just a good work habit, more than a necessary part of the routine. In big-time genetic research, attention to detail is the very meat and the god of science. It isn't something that's expected; it is simply the way of things. Those in the field, particularly those who lead the field, are slaves to detail. They labor in submerged mines of it, and haul great loads of it up from the bottom of an unseen ocean-the invisible sea of biological phenomena, upon which all living things float. Detail's rule over genetics is total and cruel. Months and even years of work have literally gone down the drain because of the most minor miscalculations. Indeed, perhaps the greatest discovery in the history of the discipline-the double-helix structure of DNA-might have been made by Linus Pauling instead of James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick. But Pauling's equations contained a simple mistake in undergraduate-level chemistry, a sin against detail that is now part of the legend. Each of the six scientists singled out here has made his mark by mastering his own particular set of