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fistula

(Encyclopedia)fistula fĭsˈcho͝olə [key], abnormal, usually ulcerous channellike formation between two internal organs or between an internal organ and the skin. It may follow a surgical procedure with improper ...

retrovirus

(Encyclopedia)retrovirus, type of RNA virus that, unlike other RNA viruses, reproduces by transcribing itself into DNA. An enzyme called reverse transcriptase allows a retrovirus's RNA to act as the template for th...

Ratcliffe, Sir Peter John

(Encyclopedia)Ratcliffe, Sir Peter John, 1954–, British cellular and molecular biologist, M.D., Cambridge, 1987. He has been a researcher at Oxford since 1987. Ratcliffe, along with William Kaelin and Gregg Semen...

Ohsumi, Yoshinori

(Encyclopedia)Ohsumi, Yoshinori, 1945–, Japanese biologist, Ph.D. Univ. of Tokyo, 1974. He was a researcher at the Univ. of Tokyo from 1977 to 1996, when he joined the National Institute for Basic Biology in Japa...

Winter, Sir Gregory Paul

(Encyclopedia)Winter, Sir Gregory Paul, 1951–, British biochemist, Ph.D. Cambridge, 1976. He has spent most of his career as a researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, where since ...

Burnet, Sir Macfarlane

(Encyclopedia)Burnet, Sir Macfarlane, 1899–1985, Australian virologist and physician. He was resident pathologist (1923–24) at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and a Beit fellow (1926–27) at the Lister Institute,...

grain, in agriculture

(Encyclopedia)grain, in agriculture, term referring to the caryopsis, or dry fruit, of a cereal grass. The term is also applied to the seedlike fruits of buckwheat and of certain other plants and is used collective...

embryo screening

(Encyclopedia)embryo screening, procedure (see genetic testing) in which a single cell is removed from an embryo two or three days after it has been conceived through in vitro fertilization and tested for genetic a...

heatstroke

(Encyclopedia)heatstroke, profound disturbance of the heat-regulating mechanism of the body, also known as sunstroke. It is characterized by extremely high body temperatures and sometimes by convulsions and coma. T...

Rockefeller University

(Encyclopedia)Rockefeller University, philanthropic organization in New York City, founded 1901 as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research by John D. Rockefeller for furthering medical science and its allied...