January 2010

The IGSP Education Office is now accepting applications for the 2010 Summer Fellowships program.

Through the 10 week program, Explorations in the Genome Sciences, students will have the opportunity to engage in research within the IGSP's interdisciplinary environment. Fellows are mentored by faculty and participate in additional scheduled activities, including weekly lunch-lectures, science career dinners, IGSP seminars, student research discussions, planned social activities and end-of-summer research presentations.

Please note that the Summer Fellowships in Genome Sciences & Policy are now open to current Freshman, Sophomore and Junior students from any four-year college or university who have successfully completed or are currently enrolled in at least one biological sciences course.

The deadline for application is Friday, February 5th. Full details about the fellowship are available on our web site along with profiles of last summer's undergraduate fellows. Please direct any additional inquiries you may have about the program to Shandra Robertson.

Future Looks Small to Experts
In a News & Observer article about what we can expect in the new decade, Geoff Ginsburg says that the completion during the 2000s of the Human Genome Project should lead to a basic redirection of medicine toward more precise diagnoses and treatments.

Your Own Personal Genome
In a Chemical & Engineering News article about the growing field of personal genomics, Bob Cook-Deegan said the use of whole-genome sequencing in place of newborn screening would have to be weighed especially carefully. "We’d have to know that we were going to have some legitimate use for that information on every baby."

Oncologists Feel New Genetic Test for Tamoxifen Sensitivity Not Ready for the Clinic
Despite commercial availability and direct to consumer marketing of a new genetic test designed to reveal a breast cancer patient’s sensitivity to tamoxifen, most physicians in the U.S. are not currently using it to guide treatment, according to a report at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium by Jeffrey Peppercorn. IGSP Investigator Laura Beskow and IGSP Member Kelly Marcom were collaborators on the study.

Dongliang Ge: Helping Patients Through Genomics
In a GenomeWeb profile, Dongliang Ge says he "really wants...to figure out why people are so different in disease susceptibility."

Child Abuse, Neglect Linked to Later Health Problems
Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt found that adults who experience early childhood abuse, neglect, social isolation or economic hardship were more likely to exhibit depression, chronic inflammation and other markers related to increased health risks. Read the original report in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Drosophila ORC Localizes to Open Chromatin and Marks Sites of Cohesin Complex Loading
In a Genome Research report David MacAlpine and colleagues investigate the genome-wide distribution of origin recognition complexes (ORC) in Drosophila and found that ORC localize to specific chromosomal locations in the absence of any discernible simple motif.

We are the Genes We've Been Waiting For: Rational Responses to the Gathering Storm of Personal Genomics
Misha Angrist says in The American Journal of Bioethics, "We can and should bemoan the state of genetics education in medical school and figure out how to fix it. But when sequencing a human genome costs less than cosmetic surgery and disease-centric social networking is all the rage, the current ranks of general practitioners and indeed, all manner of health professionals, are certain to be put on the spot."

Promoting Developmental Transcription
In Development, Uwe Ohler and his colleague review recent studies that have uncovered significant regulatory functions in developmental transcription for the TFIID basal transcription factors and for the DNA core promoter elements that are located close to transcription start sites.

Omics Meet Networks-Using Systems Approaches to Infer Regulatory Networks in Plants
Philip Benfey and colleagues say in Current Opinion in Plant Biology that the many recently-generated genomic-scale datasets in plants have led to some of the most detailed molecular maps in any multicellular organism, yet more sophisticated systems biology approaches are needed.

Characterizing the Clinical Relevance of an Embryonic Stem Cell Phenotype in Lung Adenocarcinoma
In Clinical Cancer Research, Anil Potti and colleagues conclude that lung adenocarcinomas that share a common gene expression pattern with embryonic stem cells are associated with decreased survival, increased biological complexity and an increased likelihood of resistance to cisplatin.

Extraction and Comparison of Gene Expression Patterns from 2D RNA In Situ Hybridization Images
In Bioinformatics, Uwe Ohler and colleagues report the development of image segmentation and registration methods to identify and extract spatial gene expression patterns from RNA in situ hybridization experiments of Drosophila embryos.

A Polymorphism in the HCP5 Gene Associated with HLA-B*5701 Does Not Restrict HIV-1 In Vitro
In the journal AIDS, David Goldstein and colleagues at CHAVI report that a SNP earlier found to correlate with a lower HIV-1 viral set point does not restrict growth of the virus in cell culture.

Genomic and Personalized Medicine: Foundations and Applications
In a review in Translational Research, Geoff Ginsburg and Hunt Willard say that challenges to personalized healthcare will be confronted and solved with the certainty that the science behind genomic medicine is sound and the practice of medicine that it informs is evidence based.

For full details and the latest updates on IGSP seminars and events, see the Events Calendar

A selection of upcoming events:

Thursday, January 7th
Genomic Medicine Forum
Victoria Seewaldt will present "Good Breasts Gone Bad - Translating Basic Science Discoveries to the Community."

Tuesday, January 12th
Tuesday Seminar Series
Nick Buchler will present.

Wednesday, January 13th
Systems Biology Seminar
Jeff Chang will present "Dissecting the growth signaling network."

Tuesday, January 19th
Genome Academy
Peyton Vaughn kicks off the spring series with an "Introduction to Unix."

Wednesday, January 27th
Computational Biology-Systems Biology Joint Seminar
Walter Fontana of Harvard will present.

Thursday, January 28th
Genomic Medicine Forum
Ken Kawamoto presents "Clinical Decision Suppot for Genomic Medicine."

The IGSP welcomes Ryan Baugh in the department of biology and Nico Katsanis in the department of cell biology as its newest members.

A new working group on personal genomics is aimed at those with an interest in direct-to-consumer services and the transition to full-genome sequencing in the forseeable future. If you would like to join, subscribe to the listserv and plan on attending the first monthly meeting on Wednesday, February 10th at 2pm in CIEMAS 2240.

The National Institutes of Health has just announced ARRA funding for research in five thematic areas, including the application of genomics and other high throughput technologies, the translation of basic science discoveries into better treatments, and the use of science to enable health care reform.

The US Congress has passed a spending bill for fiscal year 2010 that would increase funding for the National Institutes of Health by around 2.3 percent over 2009 to $31.2 billion, including an increase of 2.7 percent for the National Human Genome Research Institute to $516 million, according to a GenomeWeb report.

The National Institutes of Health will fund efforts to develop technologies that could be used to visualize or analyze epigenetic changes inside living animals.