1. A free database of references to papers on life sciences and biomedical topics set up in 1996]
2. When the electron microscope was developed in 1931, virus particles could be seen for the first time.
3. ‘A virus is nothing but a package of genes inside some proteins. So whether it’s alive or not is kind of debatable. It’s either a kind of a complex chemical or a very simple life form,’ says Jeffery Taubenberger, Senior Investigator in the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland.
4. A postdoctoral scholar (‘postdoc’) is an individual with a doctoral degree who’s engaged in a temporary period of mentored research and/or scholarly training in order to acquire the professional skills needed for his or her future career.
5. The others were teams led by Mariano Barbacid at the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, and Michael Wigler at Cold Spring Harbor.
6. A somatic mutation is a mutation in a mature cell that has occurred spontaneously during the course of life, as opposed to a mutation that is inherited and will be present in all the cells, both normal and cancerous.
7. The read-out of a procedure that looks at isolated bits of DNA.
8. In fact, the first ever transgenic mouse was created in 1982 by Richard Palmiter and Ralph Brinster working at the Universities of Washington and Pennsylvania respectively. But genetic modification was made a great deal easier and more precise by the technology that won Capecchi and Smithies their Nobel Prize.
9. A lipoprotein is a combination of a fat and protein molecule. The protein helps to transport fat to where it is needed in the body.