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David Bartel’s lab at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research reported the exciting discovery of a new class of small genes last month. The genes don’t code for proteins, but instead code for tiny RNAs called "microRNAs" —only 20 to 24 bases long—thought to be important in regulating protein levels. The results were published in the October 26 issue of Science along with two other papers with similar findings, one from Thomas Tuschl’s lab at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and the other from Victor Ambros’s lab at Dartmouth Medical School.

Chalking up another victory for comparative genomics, researchers from Genoscope (The French National Sequencing Center) in Paris, France, and the Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research today announced that they have produced a six-fold sequence coverage of Tetraodon nigroviridis, a type of puffer fish whose genome is estimated to be 380 million DNA letters long.

Using DNA microarray technology, researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have discovered that a type of human immune cell, known as a dendritic cell, initiates an immune response that is tailor-made for specific infectious organisms. The researchers found that dendritic cells turn on different sets of genes, or a signature pattern of gene response, depending on whether the organism is a bacteria, virus, or fungus. This study shows that even at the earliest stages of infection, the human body knows the nature of the infectious organism, or pathogen, and responds with a specific type of immune response to eliminate the pathogen.

Research from Robert Weinberg’s lab at the Whitehead Institute has uncovered a much sought after piece of the puzzle of how cells use a protein called p53 to voluntarily die when the cell’s DNA is damaged. In fact, p53 is defective in 50% of human cancers allowing the cells to multiply despite DNA mutations.

In two companion papers this week, researchers from the Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research report important findings that set the stage for the next steps in the Human Genome Project—mapping and identifying all the genes that predispose us to common diseases. The studies, one by Mark Daly, Eric Lander, and colleagues, and the other by John Rioux and colleagues at Whitehead Genome Center, provide the impetus for building a “haplotype” map of the genome—a map that will make it easier, faster, and perhaps cheaper to find disease-causing or disease-predisposing genes.

For the first time, researchers at the Whitehead Institute have mapped the complete circuit of one of life's most fundamental processes—the cell cycle, which tells cells when to divide. This network diagram describes the genetic switches and connections that form the circuit common to a process found in all living organisms, from bacteria to human beings. The findings were published in the September 21 issue of Cell by Whitehead Member Richard Young and his colleagues.

Acclaimed molecular biologist Susan L. Lindquist was today appointed director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. A pioneering researcher with an interdisciplinary bent, Lindquist comes to the Whitehead from the University of Chicago where she is the Albert D. Lasker Professor of Medical Sciences, a Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Lindquist succeeds Whitehead’s two previous directors, Nobel laureate David Baltimore and yeast genetics pioneer Gerald Fink.

Scientists have found the first evidence to show that even seemingly normal-looking clones may harbor serious abnormalities affecting gene expression that may not manifest themselves as outward characteristics. The findings, reported in the July 6 issue of Science by researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and University of Hawaii, confirm the previous suspicion that reproductive cloning is not only inefficient, but may actually be unsafe.