Several new awards have been made through the Wellcome Trust's Molecules, Genes and Cells stream.

Professor Peter St George-Hyslop, who studies the genetic and molecular mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease, is returning to the UK from Canada to take up a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research. He will carry out structural and molecular studies of how proteins such as presenilins contribute to the disease process - work that could impact on the design of future therapeutics.

Professor Neil Brockdorff has also been awarded a Principal Research Fellowship, with which he will be moving to the University of Oxford's new Institute of Chromosome Biology. At the Institute - which is being established with a Wellcome Trust capital funding award and is led by Professor Kim Nasmyth - he will dissect the mechanisms of X-chromosome inactivation. Also moving to the Institute is Professor Ilan Davis, previously of the University of Edinburgh, who studies mechanisms of mRNA transport and anchoring in cells and whose Senior Research Fellowship has recently been renewed.

Professor Andrew Sharrocks and colleagues at the University of Manchester were awarded an equipment grant to establish an RNAi screening facility to investigate the function of around 21 000 human genes. The facility will be a valuable high-throughput resource for researchers at the University.