Science and Medicine News

A BAR CODE FOR GENES  A thumbnail-size silicon chip designed to carry a neat array of up to 100,000 DNA fragments will speed the pace of genetic discovery, scientists report. The GeneChip is at the core of a new technique that simultaneously gathers clues about the functions of the thousands of different genes that make up an organism. Researchers currently are labeling these genes with distinguishing DNA tags, which will serve as molecular bar codes that can be simultaneously detected using the GeneChip. Scientists will be able to use the bar code reading to figure out which genes are important for survival under particular environmental conditions or at a given moment in an organism's life. Ronald Davis, professor of biochemistry, says that the technology will dramatically speed up and reduce the cost of procedures like disease diagnosis, basic biological research and the search for new drugs to fight infections.

FEELING DOWN?  Thyroid disorders can affect healthy persons at any age, and almost anyone who experiences an otherwise unexplained change in well-being that lasts a month or more is a candidate to be tested for these common ailments, says Dr. I. Ross McDougall, professor of radiology and of medicine at Stanford. "It's important to keep thyroid disease in mind when symptoms, ranging from fatigue to depression, are long-standing and have no apparent cause," says McDougall. Simple blood tests can point to treatable thyroid diseases. "And treatment, while often long-term or life-long, usually results in total elimination of symptoms," notes McDougall. The thyroid gland releases hormones that play an important role in growth and metabolism. When the thyroid produces too much thyroid hormone, you have hyperthyroidism. Too little hormone is hypothyroidism. Changes in thyroid function are somewhat more common at puberty, after pregnancy and at menopause. While both forms can strike at any age, underproduction of thyroid hormone most commonly affects women over age 60. Both hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism are much more common in women and tend to run in families. ST

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