NEWSWEEK International Editions: Highlights and Exclusives, OCT. 15, ...( COVER: Biology Reborn. (All overs...),Health

COVER: Biology Reborn. (All overseas editions). In recent months, a perfect storm of new technology and research has blown apart 20th-century dogma in the fields of biology and genetics, writes Lee Silver, a professor of molecular biology at Princeton. He writes that many scientists now believe that heredity is the result of an incredibly complex interplay among the basic components of the genome, scattered among many different genes and even the vast stretches of "junk DNA" once thought to serve no purpose. The result of this seemingly modest conceptual breakthrough has been a torrent of new discoveries. Scientists around the world have identified alterations in the sequence of DNA that play causative roles in a range of common diseases, including types 1 and 2 diabetes; schizophrenia; bipolar disorder; glaucoma; inflammatory bowel disease; rheumatoid arthritis; hypertension; restless legs syndrome; susceptibility to gallstone formation; lupus; multiple sclerosis; coronary heart disease; colorectal, prostate and breast cancer, and the pace at which HIV infection causes full-blown AIDS. While still far from cures, researchers hope these discoveries will eventually enable physicians to prescribe genome-specific preventions and treatments for diseases.

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China's New Guard. Beijing Bureau Chief Melinda Liu and Special Correspondent Jonathan Ansfield report on a young new generation of Chinese leaders who could transform China's Communist Party. Next week, more than 2,000 select Chinese Communist Party cadres will gather for a pivotal meeting at Beijing's Great Hall of the People. The No. 1 item on this party congress's agenda is the advancement of China's future leaders, the
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