Joe DeRisi of UC San Francisco on "Strange Tails: Viral discovery & deep sequencing" at the 8th Annual Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting on March 27, 2013 in Walnut Creek, Calif.

Eoin Brodie of Berkeley Lab on "Succession of phylogeny and function during plant litter decomposition" at the 8th Annual Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting on March 27, 2013 in Walnut Creek, Calif.

Sean Gordon of the USDA on "Natural variation in Brachypodium disctachyon: Deep Sequencing of Highly Diverse Natural Accessions" at the 8th Annual Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting on March 27, 2013 in Walnut Creek, Calif.

Sam Deutsch of the DOE JGI on "Synthetic Metagenomics: Converting digital information back to Biology" at the 8th Annual Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting in Walnut Creek, Calif.

Most dividing cells possess a spindle assembly checkpoint that prevents them from entering anaphase until all their chromosomes are correctly attached to the metaphase spindle. Shao et al. reveal that Xenopus eggs lack this checkpoint, allowing them to undergo meiosis in the absence of microtubules or in the presence of monopolar spindles. This biosights episode presents the paper by Shao et al. from the April 15, 2013 issue of The Journal of Cell Biology and includes an interview with...

Before starting cancer treatment, breast cancer patient Doris Thomas went through a series of tests at MD Anderson Cancer Center, all in one day. Since MD Anderson is a multidisciplinary hospital, it is typical for tests to be scheduled and completed under one roof in one day. Tests performed include an echocardiogram, lung CT scan, lab work and brain MRI.