“Institute of Medicine elects 13 Mass. members - Boston Globe” plus 4 more

Institute of Medicine elects 13 Mass. members - Boston Globe
Brain power goes green - EurekAlert
Scientists use math modeling to predict unknown biological mechanism ... - PhysOrg
Student bee detectives use garden as ‘living laboratory' - Gazette
Leroy Hood-Led Venture Kicks Off with $30M - Genetic Engineering News

Institute of Medicine elects 13 Mass. members - Boston Globe

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 08:07 AM PDT

Thirteen Massachusetts researchers and clinicians have been elected to the Institute of Medicine, a prestigious national body that makes recommendations on health and health-care policy.

The institute's 65 new members include:

Amy N. Finkelstein, professor of economics, MIT
Alfred L. Goldberg, professor of cell biology, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Sue J. Goldie, professor of public health, and director, Center for Health Decision Science, Harvard School of Public Health
Dr. Daniel A. Haber, professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, and director, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center
Tyler E. Jacks, professor of biology, and director, David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, MIT
Dr. Ichiro Kawachi, professor and chair, department of society, human development, and health, Harvard School of Public Health
Dr. Isaac S. Kohane, professor of pediatrics and health sciences and technology, Harvard Medical School; and chair, informatics program, Children's Hospital Boston
Dr. Joan Y. Reede, dean for diversity and community partnership and associate professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School
Gary Ruvkun, professor of genetics, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital
Dr. Clifford B. Saper, professor of neurology and neuroscience, Harvard Medical School, and professor and head, department of neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Dr. Megan Sykes, associate director, Transplantation Biology Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, and professor of surgery and professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Bruce D. Walker, director, Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, and Harvard University
Dr. Ralph Weissleder, professor of systems biology and radiology, Harvard Medical School, and director, Center for Systems Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Brain power goes green - EurekAlert

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 06:34 AM PDT

Public release date: 14-Oct-2009
[ | E-mail |

Share ]

Contact: Steve Pogonowski
press@f1000.com
Faculty of 1000: Biology and Medicine

Our brains, it turns out, are eco-friendly. A study published in Science and reviewed by F1000 Biology members Venkatesh Murthy and Jakob Sorensen reveals that our brains have the amazing ability to be energy efficient.

Brain cells generate and propagate nerve impulses, or action potentials, by controlling the flow of positive sodium and potassium ions in and out of the cells. Re-establishing the ion equilibrium after an action potential requires energy.

The amount of energy needed for action potentials was previously estimated using a giant nerve cell from squid. Now, researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research in Germany show that squid cell studies overestimated the amount of energy necessary to generate an action potential by almost a factor of four, suggesting human brains have the same potential to be energy efficient.

The researchers used a novel technique to record the voltage generated by nerve cells to "show that a rather subtle separation between the timing of sodium entry and potassium exit during action potentials can determine how much energy is expended to maintain the ionic gradients," Murthy says.

Murthy goes on to say that "[these results] are important, not just for a basic understanding of brain metabolism, but also for interpreting signals detected by non-invasive brain imaging techniques." Sorensen concludes that "the amazing thing is that we didn't realize the result a long time ago!"

Media Contact
Steve Pogonowski
Public Relations Manager
Faculty of 1000
steve.pogonowski@f1000.com
http://blog.f1000.com
http://twitter.com/f1000
http://youtube.com/Facultyof1000

Notes to Editors

1. Venkatesh Murthy, Faculty Member for F1000 Biology, is Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University http://f1000biology.com/about/biography/1467388697212944

2. Jakob Sorensen, Faculty Member for Neuroscience, is Professor of Neuroscience at the Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark http://f1000biology.com/about/biography/9836154631995993

3. The full text of this article is available free for 90 days at http://www.f1000biology.com/article/t6pgnp2cs29949r/id/1164821.

4. An abstract for the paper, Energy-Efficient Action Potentials in Hippocampal Mossy Fibers by Alle, Roth and Geiger, is at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5946/1405

5. Please name Faculty of 1000 Biology in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the website.

6. Faculty of 1000, http://f1000.com, is a unique online service that helps you stay informed of high impact articles and access the opinions of global leaders in biology. Our distinguished international faculty selects and evaluates key articles across medicine, providing a rapidly updated, authoritative guide to the biomedical literature that matters.

7. Please contact Steve Pogonowski, PR Manager, for a complimentary journalist subscription to Faculty of 1000 http://f1000.com.

[ | E-mail | Share ]

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Scientists use math modeling to predict unknown biological mechanism ... - PhysOrg

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 08:35 AM PDT

Scientists use math modeling to predict unknown biological mechanism of regulation

October 14th, 2009 Scientists use math modeling to predict unknown biological mechanism of regulation

Enlarge

Orly Alter and her students worked with John F. X. Diffley, deputy director of the London Research Institute of Cancer Research UK, and members of his Chromosome Replication Lab, on experiments that were designed to test mathematical modeling to predict a previously unknown biological mechanism of regulation. The results, published online in the journal Nature Molecular Systems Biology on Oct. 13, 2009, verify the computationally predicted mechanism. Credit: University of Texas Cockrell School of Engineering

A team of scientists, led by a biomedical engineer at The University of Texas at Austin, have demonstrated - for the first time - that mathematical models created from data obtained by DNA microarrays, can be used to correctly predict previously unknown cellular mechanisms. This brings biologists a step closer to one day being able to understand and control the inner workings of the cell as readily as NASA engineers plot the trajectories of spacecraft today.

"Thanks to the Human Genome Project, biology and medicine today may be at a point similar to where physics was after the advent of the telescope," said Orly Alter, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the university. "The rapidly growing number of large-scale DNA microarray data sets hold the key to the discovery of cellular mechanisms, just as the astronomical tables compiled by Galileo and Tycho after the invention of the telescope enabled accurate predictions of planetary motions and, later, the discovery of universal gravitation. And just as Kepler and Newton made these predictions and discoveries by using mathematical frameworks to describe trends in astronomical data, so future discovery and control in biology and medicine will come from the mathematical modeling of large-scale molecular biological data."

In a 2004 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the late professor Gene H. Golub of Stanford University, Alter, who holds a Ph.D. in applied physics, used mathematical techniques inspired by those used in quantum mechanics to predict a previously unknown mechanism of regulation that correlates the beginning of DNA replication with RNA transcription, the process by which the information in DNA is transferred to RNA. This is the first mechanism to be predicted from mathematical modeling of microarray data.

For the past four years, Alter and her students worked with John F. X. Diffley, deputy director of the London Research Institute of Cancer Research UK, and members of his Chromosome Replication Lab, on experiments that were designed to test this prediction. The results, published online in the journal Nature Molecular Systems Biology on October 13, 2009, verify the computationally predicted mechanism.

A DNA microarray is a glass slide that holds an array of thousands of specific DNA sequences acting as probes for different genes, making it possible to record the activity of thousands of genes at once. Making sense of the massive amount of data DNA microarrays generate is a major challenge. In her Genomic Signal Processing Lab, Alter creates mathematical models by arranging the data in multi-dimensional tables known as tensors. She then develops algorithms to uncover patterns in these data structures, and is able to relate these patterns to mechanisms that govern the activity of DNA and RNA in the cell.

Source: University of Texas at Austin (news : web)

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Student bee detectives use garden as ‘living laboratory' - Gazette

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 09:40 AM PDT

There's a buzz at Saint John the Baptist Catholic School about a new garden that's helping students understand plant biology, gardening and bee pollination patterns. Full of lavender plants, marigolds and, of course, plenty of bees, young students are getting an early start in biology as they observe the insects and how plants grow.

"We've got a field trip right here in our own backyard," said second-grade teacher Susan McElroy.

The organic garden was planted by students and parent volunteers last Earth Day and is now a "living laboratory" where students can learn hands-on lessons, added garden coordinator and parent volunteer Mary Phillips Quinn.

"They learn a lot through their own observations," McElroy said.

This was clear during a lesson last week on how seeds are dispersed in the wild, in which students used magnifying glasses to find seeds in the garden and guess how they could be spread. Wind wanderers, animal scatterers, water followers and pop-gun plants were topics of conversation for one third-grade class.

"Usually magnolia trees end up near a river ... since it's mostly particles of wood, it would probably float," said student Ian Moore, who found a magnolia pod in the garden, on how this particular type of seed could spread by being a "water follower."

Other students were entranced by the garden's many bees.

"I see a bee pollinating a plant!" exclaimed third-grader Dalena Garcia, who proudly used a term learned in science class.

The learning extends beyond the garden, teachers say. Second-graders in George Ellis' computer class are using stories written about observations in the garden to create digital stories, which combine voice recordings of the students reading their stories with photos and hand-drawn pictures of the garden and its insects.

"I like this kind of flower, with the long stem and the purple flower," said second-grader Jessica Moore as she pointed to one of her crayon drawings of the garden.

"It's a lavender hyssop!" corrected Julian Moore, another second-grader, who is no relation to Jessica.

The garden will continue to grow as the students progress through the school, Quinn said. Plans for a monarch butterfly station, bible-themed plant garden and commemorative stone are in the works for the next year, she said.

For the remainder of the fall, the slightly scared— but mostly intrigued— students will continue checking out the bees, secretly planting seeds they've found and learning about plant parts.

"Plants are so intelligent, even though they don't have a brain," said third-grader Ian Moore as he headed inside to his next class.

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Leroy Hood-Led Venture Kicks Off with $30M - Genetic Engineering News

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 07:45 AM PDT

Oct 14 2009, 10:47 AM EST

Leroy Hood-Led Venture Kicks Off with $30M

GEN News Highlights

Integrated Diagnostics officially launched today with over $30 million in funding. The company has been founded by system biology expert Leroy Hood, M.D., Ph.D. The firm will focus on developing personalized and preventive diagnostics based on breakthroughs using genomic and proteomic technologies to identify organ-specific proteins.

"Just as the DNA sequencer allowed us to decode the human genome, the technology behind Integrated Diagnostics will allow us unprecedented insight into preventing and treating diseases like cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer's by analyzing the proteins that appear in their earliest stages," remarks Dr. Hood, current president of The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) and inventor of the DNA sequencer. "By taking a systems approach to monitoring an individual's health we will be able to provide physicians and patients an early warning system for preventing and treating diseases."

Integrated Diagnostics will have access to Dr. Hood's research at ISB investigating protein blood markers that can report on the physiological state of the body's 50 major organs. His research uses genomic and proteomic techniques to identify blood proteins that are only synthesized in the organ of interest and then identifies subtle changes that result from disease or treatment.

By monitoring concentrations of these proteins in the blood, disruptions in healthy function can be detected and traced back to the diseased organ. This work is based on the concept of a systems view of disease where pathophysiology arises from disease-perturbed networks of proteins, genes, and other molecules.

Through its research collaborations, Integrated Diagnostics possesses proprietary data on organ-specific proteins across a range of human organs. These protein panels are applicable to many diagnostic modalities including early detection of disease, stratification of disease types, and monitoring disease progression and recurrence.

Integrated Diagnostics is the first commercial enterprise to emerge from a $200 million public-private partnership announced in 2008 between Luxembourg and three American research institutions including ISB.

Other founders of Integrated Diagnostics are Jim Heath, Ph.D., professor of chemistry at Caltech, David Galas, Ph.D., professor at ISB and vp/CSO of the Battelle Memorial Institute, and Paul Kearney, Ph.D., scientific director of special projects at ISB.

Comment on this News:

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Biology

Wednesday, October 14, 2009