Summary:Chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) can be treated sucAllogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) is a successful treatment modality for patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML). Sixty to 80 percent of patients cessfully with allogeneic bone marrow transplantation transplanted with unmanipulated BM in first chronic phase (BMT) leading to long-term disease-free survival. Leu-(CP) achieve long-term disease-free survival. 1 However, kemia relapse, however, remains a significant clinical relapse rates of 10-20% are still the most frequent cause problem. Relapse following BMT presumably results of treatment failure. 2,3 Leukaemia relapse following BMT from the expansion of small numbers of recipient leupresumably results from the inability of the conditioning kaemic cells which have survived the conditioning therregimen to eliminate all recipient leukaemic cells. Ideally, apy. In order to define patients who are at a high risk following BMT, the recipient's bone marrow should be of leukaemia relapse, a variety of techniques have been completely ablated by the conditioning regimen, facilitating employed to detect persistence of host haemopoiesis the engraftment of donor haemopoietic stem cells giving (mixed chimaerism, MC) or residual leukaemia rise to a complete donor haemopoietic chimaera. 4(minimal residual disease, MRD). However, the precise The true incidence and significance of the detection of relationship between the detection of MC and MRD mixed haemopoietic chimaerism (MC) post-BMT remains post-BMT is unknown. We have investigated chimaerunclear. 4,5 MC was initially thought to indicate an impendism and MRD status in 22 patients who were in clinical ing relapse, however, using more sensitive molecular techand haematological remission post-allogeneic BMT for niques it has become clear that MC post-BMT is not chronic phase CML. Chimaerism was assessed using uncommon, with varying percentages of recipient cells short tandem repeat PCR (STR-PCR) while BCR-ABL being detected in different study groups. [6][7][8][9][10] This variation mRNA detection using reverse transcriptase polymerase in the degree of MC is influenced by a number of factors chain reaction (RT-PCR) was performed to detect the including the sensitivity and timing of the assay, the disease presence of MRD. Seventeen patients received unmanindication for BMT, the stage of disease at time of BMT ipulated marrow (non-TCD) while in five patients a T and the choice of conditioning regimen. Several studies cell-depleted transplant (TCD) was performed as indicated that low levels of persisting recipient cells are not additional GVHD prophylaxis. Chimaerism was evaluassociated with an increased risk of leukaemic relapse. 7-10ated in 18 patients (14 non-TCD, four TCD). Mixed However, increasing levels of recipient cells over time chimaerism was an uncommon finding in recipients of (progressive mixed chimaerism) appear to predict relapse, unmanipulated BMT (21%) when compared to TCD especially in recipients of a T cell-depleted (TCD) trans-BMT (100...

The most prolific of Darwin's correspondents from Ireland was James Torbitt, an enterprising grocer and wine merchant of 58 North Street, Belfast. Between February 1876 and March 1882, 141 letters were exchanged on the feasibility and ways of supporting one of Torbitt's commercial projects, the large-scale production and distribution of true potato seeds (Solan um tuberosum) to produce plants resistant to the late blight fungus Phytophthora infestans, the cause of repeated potato crop failures and thus the Irish famines in the nineteenth century. Ninety-three of these letters were exchanged between Torbitt and Darwin, and 48 between Darwin and third parties, seeking or offering help and advice on the project. Torbitt's project required selecting the small proportion of plants in an infested field that survived the infection, and using those as parents to produce seeds. This was a direct application of Darwin's principle of selection. Darwin cautiously lobbied high-ranking civil servants in London to obtain government funding for the project, and also provided his own personal financial support to Torbitt.

The natural history review was a quarterly founded in 1854 by Edward Perceval Wright, then an undergraduate student of zoology at Trinity College Dublin. Its first editorial committee (1856–1860) held traditional views of natural history. By 1860 The natural history review had failed, ostensibly for lack of subscribers, and Wright put it in the hands of Thomas Henry Huxley who, together with Joseph Hooker, John Tyndall and others, was then looking for a vehicle to disseminate the agenda of what Huxley later called “scientific naturalism”. Against advice from his friends, Darwin, Lyell and Hooker, Huxley accepted the editorship, preserving the title but giving The natural history review a new direction by replacing the former editorial team with some of his like-minded colleagues. Extant correspondence between several of these comprises dozens of letters in which The natural history review (1861–1865) was discussed. By the end of 1862 Huxley had given up on it, but the periodical survived until July 1865 with Hooker at the head. Throughout this second series, Charles Darwin exercised an unofficial, effective, and to today's eyes, ethically questionable editorial role. The natural history review ceased publication under Hooker in 1865. Competition from other publications, the lack of a clear purpose and the prevalence of ideology over business sense in the editor-in-chief were the likely reasons for its repeated failures.

William Bookey Brownrigg, who discovered the Upper Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian)

The collection of Carboniferous fish and amphibian fossils found in Jarrow in 1864 has been the object of several studies, and has resided successively in at least three Irish museums. This paper draws from the Huxley archives in Imperial College London and from other archives to trace the history of its finding and earliest description. The story was marked by naivety, ambition, abuse, deception and delays, but eventually some of the fossils were salvaged by the expertise and determined action of Thomas Henry Huxley, not usually known for his patience, who stepped into a minefield of conflicting interests but managed to publish and illustrate seven new genera and species from among the specimens. In so doing he trampled, perhaps by relying too much on Wright's assurances, on the sensitivities and possible claims to priority of other local experts.