Coffee Break is a resource at NCBI that combines reports on recent biomedical discoveries with use of NCBI tools. The result is an interactive tutorial that tells a biological story. Each report is based on a discovery reported in one or more articles from the recently published peer-reviewed literature. After a brief introduction that sets the work described into a broader context, the report focuses on how a molecular understanding can provide explanations of observed biology and lead to therapies for diseases.

Each vignette also highlights the NCBI tools and resources used in the research process. These tools include PubMed, PubMed Central, Entrez Gene, and MapViewer.

Coffee Break articles should be fun and informative reading for molecular biologists, clinicians, and students, and may serve as teaching aids for college and graduate students.

Contents

• From the Statue of Liberty to the coin in your back pocket: The secret life of copper
  Created: October 20, 2014.
• Yoda and the fountain of youth? The many hats of IGF-1
  Created: July 21, 2014.
• How low can you go? The promise of a new class of cholesterol lowering drugs
  Created: March 25, 2014.
• Turning the white fat brown: a new approach to obesity?
  Created: March 3, 2014.
• A gut feeling: bugs are critical for good health
  Created: July 24, 2013.
• DNAs of our lives: The role of pharmacogenomics in modern medicine
  Created: April 25, 2013.
• Roses, noses, and underarms: how one variation in our DNA influences underarm perspiration (and ear wax)
  Created: March 25, 2013.
• Neanderthal man lives on in some of us: the genome of our extinct sister species has been sequenced
  Created: August 2, 2010.
• From Africa to the Arctic: how the woolly mammoth adapted to the cold
  Created: May 31, 2010.
• The songbird and the chicken: how a song can change a genome
  Created: May 3, 2010.
• Will malaria soon be a thing of the past? the potential of recombinant protein vaccines to control one of the world's most deadly diseases
  Created: June 26, 2006.
• Don't put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear: the genetics of ear wax
  Created: October 11, 2006.
• What you see is not what you get: DNA barcoding is helping scientists unveil nature's most hidden diversity
  Created: August 1, 2005.
• Do brains have a freshness date? the effect of aging on the human brain
  Created: January 12, 2005.
• Who let the dogs out? a genetic classification of dog breeds
  Created: October 13, 2004.
• Microbial diversity: let's tell it how it is
  Created: March 4, 2004; Last Update: March 26, 2004.
• Talking about the genetics of talking: the discovery of the first "speech and language" gene
  Created: November 1, 2003.
• Variations on a gene: investigating the genetic basis of iron overload
  Created: August 25, 2003.
• A small fortune: small RNAs involved in the regulation of developmental timing
  Created: June 5, 2002.
• Finding Fanconi: the hunt for the cause of autosomal dominant renal Fanconi syndrome
  Created: October 22, 2001.
• Opening the flood gates? association of NOD2 with Crohn's disease
  Created: August 6, 2001.
• Honey, I shrunk the genome: genome reduction in the leprosy bacillus
  Created: April 30, 2001.
• Ready, steady, go! a two-part switch that regulates gene expression
  Created: March 12, 2001.
• Fluorescent timer: the E5 mutant of the red coral protein drFP583 changes its fluorescence from green to red over time
  Created: January 22, 2001.
• Cytosolic help for mitochondrial defects: a novel method for importing tRNA into mitochondria in order to suppress mutations
  Created: December 4, 2000.
• The mouse that eats less but gains weight: a neuropeptide receptor, Mc3r, is shown to play a role in regulating energy stores
  Created: November 6, 2000.
• Tuberous sclerosis complex in flies too? a fly homolog to TSC2, called gigas, plays a role in cell cycle regulation
  Created: July 27, 2000.
• The beginning of the END: the EAST protein assembles a nucleoskeleton between chromosomes
  Created: June 16, 2000.
• Mutations and blood clots: how point mutations in clotting factor genes conspire to increase the risk of thrombosis
  Created: April 26, 2000.
• Viruses provide direction on the plant information superhighway: a viral movement protein helps to identify a counterpart in plants
  Created: December 8, 1999.
• How Candida albicans switches phenotype - and back again: the SIR2 silencing gene has a say in Candida's colony type
  Created: November 24, 1999.
• PTEN and the tumor suppressor balancing act: PTEN turns out to be the first tumor suppressor to have phosphatase activity
  Created: November 10, 1999.
• The Salmonella battle plan: how Salmonella gain entry into human intestinal cells to grow and divide
  Created: October 27, 1999.
• RNA surveillance: watching the defectives: detecting premature stop codons in mRNA halts the production of dangerous truncated proteins
  Created: October 13, 1999.
• The compound eye of flies divulges evolutionary secrets: analysis of fly eye development may shed light on human eye disease
  Created: September 29, 1999.
• The neighborhood of Alzheimer's amyloid precursor protein: new clues on Alzheimer's pathology from other proteins linked to amyloid plaque formation
  Created: September 15, 1999.
• What do Lyme disease and syphilis have in common? two pathogenic spirochetes unexpectedly share an ATP synthase
  Created: September 1, 1999.
• Dissecting the mechanism of our internal clock: how living organisms tune in to the time of day
  Created: August 18, 1999.
• Ubiquitin links Parkinson's disease genes: a tantalizing link between two new genes
  Created: August 4, 1999.
• Plant genes contribute to a sexually transmitted disease? how plant genes found their way into a human parasite
  Created: July 15, 1999.
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