While Friedreich’s ataxia is a rare disorder, tracking down the role of the protein implicated in the disease has opened up new therapeutic potentials.

A pocket of middle Australia on the northern outskirts of Perth is the setting for a proposed biobanking project that even its instigator, Professor Lyle Palmer of the University of Western Australia, calls “ludicrously ambitious”.

A new study has shown that environmental enrichment ameliorates a motor co-ordination deficit in a mouse model of Rett syndrome.

Epigenetics is moving from the laboratory to the clinic and the pharmacy, with several histone deacetylase inhibitors on the market and epigenetic screening likely to become as widespread as genetic screening.

For such a simple idea, it’s a surprise that no one has thought of it before. An automated system for streaking agar plates is on the market, developed here in Australia.

The Clinical Research Excellence (CRX08) conference starts in Brisbane tomorrow. We talk flu pandemics with plenary speaker Anne Kelso.

Professor Alan Cowman of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute will deliver the Rubbo Oration at this year’s Australian Society of Microbiology (ASM) annual meeting, being held in Melbourne next week.

The Sydney Project aims to have human embryonic stem cells in clinical trials to treat type 1 diabetes in four years.

Biochemical geneticist Kevin Carpenter discusses how he helped tracked down the blip in the Bindeez beads.