The physical manifestations of the disease that Alois Alzheimer noticed in 1906 are sticky plaques of one type of protein, now known as beta-amyloid, and nerve-cell-engulfing tangles of a second type, called tau protein.

ECONOMIST: Alzheimer's disease

With the help of Chiara Cirelli, who also works at the University of Wisconsin, Dr Tononi has created a mutant fruit fly that sleeps only two or three hours a night. (A normal fly sleeps between eight and 14 hours.) The mutation itself is in a gene for a nerve-cell protein of a type known as an ion channel.

ECONOMIST: Memory formation

Specifically, she used antibodies to a particular type of the protein, known as collagen I, that had been extracted from chickens.

ECONOMIST: Some 68m-year-old evidence that birds are dinosaurs

The odd thing about prion diseases is that the misfolded protein in question somehow acts as a catalyst for other protein molecules of the same type to misfold in the same way.

ECONOMIST: Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

Merck has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in using yeast for protein production, but Merck's yeast technology does not allow it to control the type of sugar structure on the protein.

FORBES: Pharma's Little Helper

The gene produces a molecular sensor on the T cell that is designed to latch on to a telltale protein on the surface of that specific type of cancer.

FORBES: Do-It-Yourselfer

This is fed to cattle or any other type of livestock as a high protein, nutrient dense food additive.

FORBES: Why World Food Prices Will Keep Climbing

Depending on just how researchers tailor the virus that carries the light-sensitive protein, they now can target almost any type of neuron they want to study.

WSJ: Scientists Cast Light Onto Roots of Illness Deep in the Brain

To be specific, Merck (MRK) will test a beta-amyloid precursor protein site-cleaving enzyme, or BACE, inhibitor, which the drugmaker notes is the first drug with this type of mechanism to advance to this stage of clinical research.

FORBES: Merck Makes A 'Speculative' Step Into Alzheimer's