From testing fat in sausages to dissecting the proteome of the lung-infecting fungus Cryptococcus gattii - it's been quite a journey for Associate Professor Ben Herbert, one of the speakers at this week's AOHUPO/PRICPS conference in Cairns.

Strange beasts evolve on islands: flightless bats and birds, amphibious or monstrous lizards, huge tortoises, giant rodents, dwarf elephants and even humans, such as the famous 'hobbit', H. floresiensis.

With the lifting of two moratoria on genetically modified crops in Australia recently, so did the inevitably polarised debate take off. Those for and against are unlikely to change their minds and, unfortunately, some scientists are now afraid to speak theirs.

BIO 2008, the world's largest conference for the biotechnology industry, is being held in San Diego from June 16. In our annual preview, we take a look at how the Australian sector is travelling.

Who would have thought that Chinese vegies, phosphopeptides and stressed mitochondria might advance the treatment of type 2 diabetes?

Research grid could lead to improved drug research and safer clinical trials for cancer and other diseases.

Packaging siRNA in a liposome improves delivery to tumours.

Genetic analysis of light fingers noise problem

Professor Emeritus Jack Pettigrew has argued for more than two decades that fruit bats are actually flying primates, distant relatives of monkeys, lemurs and us.

Fungi don't exactly come in boy and girl varieties, but they do have sex differences.

It is now believed that more than 60 per cent of genes are alternatively spliced, a final nail in the coffin, if it needed one, of the one-gene-one-protein hypothesis.