J Craig Venter

There has been lots of excitement this week as a horde of scientists released their first looks at the trillions of microbes that live in (or on) our bodies. As well as the two main papers published in Nature, a slate of reports was published in other journals, containing all kinds of tidbits. One week earlier, another slate of “microbiome” papers was published in the journal Science. We already covered the nuts and bolts of the Human Micriobiome Project report.

Hunting for the elusive cure for the common cold, scientists have decoded the genomes of all known strains of the human rhinovirus, the main cause of the malady that makes millions miserable each year. But don't toss out the chicken soup yet. There is so much diversity among the strains that hopes for a vaccine or a treatment that would prevent or cure every cold are slim, according to the scientists' study, published online Thursday in the journal Science.

Go to med school. Get an MBA. Take the GRE. Find a job. When students finish college, they're bombarded with advice. But advice, well intentioned as it may be, isn't always what a fresh grad needs. It's just "noise," according to Mike Marriner and Nathan Gebhard, authors of the book "Road Trip Nation: A Guide to Discovering Your Path in Life." It's the noise of "society trying to push, pull and tug you," they write in the book's introduction.

Biologists have converted one species of bacterium into another by replacing all of its DNA, a critical step toward their ultimate goal of designing entire organisms from scratch, according to a study published Thursday. The transplanted DNA took over its single-cell host in about three days. The resulting bacterium was indistinguishable from the donor species, the researchers reported in the online edition of the journal Science.

The not-so-distant prospect that scientists will be able to create new forms of life in the lab raises ethical and safety challenges, but progress in the field should not be hobbled by premature restrictions, a panel appointed by President Obama said in a report to be released Thursday. The President's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues acknowledged in its first report to the Obama White House that "do-it-yourselfers" ? individual scientists and small labs working without institutional backing or restraints ?

The X Prize Foundation, which offers monetary awards for solutions to pressing scientific challenges, has tackled space travel, moon missions and oil spill cleanups. Now it's taking on the human genome. The Archon Genomics X Prize presented by Medco is challenging teams to accurately sequence the DNA of 100 centenarians within 30 days at $1,000 or less per genome. The first team to complete the task successfully will receive $10 million, and the sequenced genomes will be published for use in research.

In a bold but uncertain bid to spur cancer treatment, federal medical researchers announced a $100-million project Tuesday to begin cataloging the disease's molecular underpinnings. The Cancer Genome Atlas, as the project is called, will start as a three-year pilot program to identify the genes behind two or three types of cancerous tumors. If the research proves promising and affordable, it would be expanded to study thousands of cancerous tumors.

Even before Celera Genomics and the public Human Genome Project announce that they have completed the first versions of the human genetic code, there is a dispute brewing over who will get scientific credit. Specifically, editors at the prestigious journal Science are now struggling over whether to publish Celera's results over the objections of some scientists in the Human Genome Project.

Fourteen years ago, the diving vessel Alvin plucked a bizarre, single-cell creature from a volcanic vent 1,000 miles off the coast of Baja California. There, under crushing pressures 245 times greater than at sea level and at temperatures just a few degrees below the boiling point of water, the Methanococcus jannaschii and its ancestors had thrived for up to 3 billion years.

The most profound social question raised by science in the 20th century has been how to wield the power that man acquired upon splitting the atom. Now, as a new century approaches, science is poised to present society with an equally momentous question: how to use man's growing ability to "split" or genetically alter DNA, the chemical code that guides the development of all life on Earth.