Bioengineering researchers at the University of California, San Diego have invented a process to help turn embryonic stem cells into the types of specialized cells being sought as possible treatments for dozens of human diseases and health conditions. Sangeeta Bhatia and Shu Chien, UCSD bioengineering professors, and Christopher J. Flaim, a bioengineering graduate student, described the cell-culture technique in a paper published in the February issue of Nature Methods, which became available online on Jan. 21.

For the first time, researchers have automatically grouped fluorescently tagged proteins from high-resolution images of cells. This technical feat opens a new way to identify disease proteins and drug targets by helping to show which proteins cluster together inside a cell. The approach, developed by Carnegie Mellon University, outperforms existing visual methods to localize proteins inside cells, says Professor Robert F. Murphy, whose report, "Data Mining in Genomics and Proteomics," appears in an upcoming special issue of the Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology.

Lack of the enzyme, acetyl CoA carboxylase 2 or ACC2, appears to turn the adipose or fat cells of mice into fat burners, explaining in part why the animals can eat more and weigh less than their normal counterparts, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers. The report that appears online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.