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The web-based ChemBank includes data on drug candidates (called small molecules) and their behavior in cells selected to serve as models of human disease, especially cancer. Using ChemBank analysis tools, investigators can query and analyze these freely available data and may even export the raw information to perform their own unique analyses. By these mechanisms, ChemBank enables researchers to gain new knowledge of human disease and to identify starting drug candidates for novel therapeutics.

The evolutionary split between human and chimpanzee is much more recent — and more complicated — than previously thought, according to a new study by scientists at the Ó³»­´«Ã½ of MIT and Harvard and at Harvard Medical School published in the May 17 online edition of Nature.

The results show that the two species split no more than 6.3 million years ago and probably less than 5.4 million years ago. Moreover, the speciation process was unusual — possibly involving an initial split followed by later hybridization before a final separation.

One of the most fascinating chapters in evolutionary history involves the details of how, and when, our own species first appeared — at its birth, just a scrawny twig in the great tree of life. Now, there are new findings, described in the May 17 online edition of Nature, that shed light on the mysterious ways whereby humans first split from chimpanzees, our closest living sister species.