Mark Skolnick

For most researchers, a major genetic breakthrough is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Mark Skolnick has had three, two of them just within the past six months. He was a key player in the mid 1970s in the development of restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs), a crucial technology in identifying virtually every disease-causing gene isolated over the last decade.

For most researchers, a major genetic breakthrough is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Mark Skolnick has had three, two of them just within the past six months. He was a key player in the mid 1970s in the development of restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs), a crucial technology in identifying virtually every disease-causing gene isolated over the last decade.

Junior's Tools, a Santa Ana-based operator of a dozen stores that specialize in power tools, has agreed to be acquired by Livermore, Calif.-based Orco Construction Supply, a privately held distributor of construction supplies. Financial terms were not disclosed. Orco, which has 22 branches throughout the western United States, said Monday it expects sales to exceed $150 million this year. Junior's Tools had 1998 sales of more than $28 million, Orco said.

Federal scientists are still wrestling with how to ethically use an explosion of genetics research, even as a company announced Thursday that it soon will sell the most comprehensive genetic test yet to predict breast cancer. The test is the latest entry in a race to bring to consumers the rapid discoveries of disease-causing genes. But patients are struggling with the ramifications of learning they have diseased genes--when there's little they can do about it.

Geneticists from the University of Utah Medical Center announced a breakthrough in genetic detection Thursday that confirms that lethal skin cancer can be inherited. Speaking at a meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics, the researchers said they identified a chromosome region believed to contain a gene that when mutated can cause melanoma. About 7,800 Americans die of melanoma every year.

Continuing its acquisition spree, contractor-supply retailer White Cap Industries Inc. said Monday it has agreed to buy Junior's Tools, whose stores specialize in power tools. White Cap, based in Costa Mesa, operates warehouse stores that sell tools and building materials to contractors. It will issue stock to pay for Santa Ana-based Junior's Tools. White Cap Chairman Greg Grosch declined to disclose financial terms of the deal. It is the ninth acquisition for White Cap since January 1997.

Most women should not subject themselves to the test for the so-called breast cancer gene, according to a group organized by Stanford University that proposed new guidelines Saturday to avoid misuse of a just-released commercial test for genetic susceptibility to breast and ovarian cancer. The test detects crucial alterations in the genes known as BRCA I and BRCA II, which are responsible for much of the breast and ovarian cancer that runs in families.

Researchers probing the genetic mutations that make some people more susceptible to cancer than others have isolated specific gene flaws for leukemia and for breast and kidney cancer. In studies published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., scientists report they have moved closer to being able to identify at a very early age those patients who have inherited specific genes that might lead to cancer later in life.

Two independent teams of medical researchers announced Thursday that they have succeeded in mapping the approximate location on human chromosomes of a genetic defect responsible for the most common inherited disease of the nervous system. The scientists, at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and at the University of Utah, said the discovery opens the way for the eventual development of diagnostic tests and possibly for treatment of neurofibromatosis, or NF.

What do you get when you pair a Mormon's affinity for big families and genealogy with his enthusiasm for advancing science? A geneticist's dream come true: a welcome at Utah family reunions. Where else can a researcher collect 200 blood samples in one day to learn whether premature labor or an infant's enlarged heart runs in a family, asks Ken Ward, an obstetrician and geneticist at the University of Utah.