Featured Science and Innovations

Interactive Features
	Many paths to muscle weakness The lab of Alan Beggs, PhD, studies the genetics of congenital myopathies, a group of rare disorders that cause the muscles to be very weak. Here, you can explore how different gene mutations can all lead to muscle weakness, focusing on a single disorder known as nemaline myopathy.
	Mapping eye-movement disorders From gene to nerve to muscle, this interactive map shows the origins of six types of congenital strabismus, or misalignment of the eyes. Mutations of six different genes, in various ways, limit eye movement by impairing one or more of the cranial nerves that stimulate the muscles that control the eyeball. Roll over each trouble spot to learn more.
	The Neuron Experiment with Children's virtual neuron to see what conditions are needed to make it fire and what happens when you connect it to other neurons. This interactive feature also provides step-through animations illustrating how electrical currents move through the cell and how it passes signals on to other neurons.
	How cancer grows and spreads This animated Flash presentation illustrates the growth, progression and metastasis of carcinomas, the type of cancer that accounts for more than 90% of all cancer cases. Using the presentation's "roadmap," you'll be able to choose your own route as you travel from one possible cancer stage to the next.
	Make a micrograph Creating a micrograph -- a photo taken through a microscope -- is not simply a matter of attaching a camera to a microscope and releasing the shutter. Rather, it's a multistep process that involves "staining" with antibodies, illuminating with various wavelengths of light, and adding and combining colors. This interactive feature details the process.
	Virtual stem cell laboratory Create red blood cells, muscle cells, neurons, and other types of specialized cells from an initial "culture" of embryonic stem cells. By adding factors to the cells, you can coax the cells into differentiating into new cell types, and you can find out what scientists know about the cells, including any known or potential therapeutic applications.
	Tensegrity in a cell For more than three decades, Children's researcher Donald Ingber, MD, PhD, has explored and substantiated the notion that living cells are tensegrity structures -- structures that stabilize themselves by balancing tension and compression. With this feature, find out what tensegrity is all about by controlling a cell's internal structural elements.
	Introduction to proteomics Proteomics -- the identification and study of proteins produced by an organism -- is the hot new science that picks up where the Human Genome Project left off. With this animated, user-controlled interactive, find out how researchers sequence and identify proteins.
	Ingber's egg analogy Don Ingber, MD, PhD, of Children's Vascular Biology Program, often uses simple analogies in his lectures to explain how tissues form and how diseases develop. In this Flash presentation, he uses eggs in a carton to illustrate how cells in our tissues behave during wound healing and tumor formation.
	Virtual tour of the proteomics laboratory The new Proteomics Center at Children's Hospital Boston is home to a host of slick instruments. This tour of the center's main lab space gives descriptions of several of these, including the new FT-ICR mass spectrometer. (QuickTime plugin required. If your computer does not have QuickTime, you can download the free plugin.)