Dr. Elazer R. Edelman, director of the Harvard-MIT Biomedical Engineering Center, is an electrical engineer who became a cardiologist and went on to do path-breaking work on the use of stents, small mesh tubes placed in narrowed or weakened arteries for the treatment of heart disease.

Robert J. Lefkowitz, a AAAS member, was named a winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on cell surface receptors.

As a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Duke University since 1976, Lefkowitz was recognized for the new insights produced by

A new study in dogs reveals two genes responsible for controlling heartbeat rhythm and re-coordinating the action of the heart’s right and left ventricles. These genes may be part of the molecular pathway affected by pacemakers, researchers report in the 14 September issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Using gene therapy or drugs to activate these genes in heart failure patients may help people who cannot use a pacemaker—or possibly replace pacemakers altogether, the study authors propose.