Contact: Paul Preuss, (510) 486-6249, paul_preuss@lbl.gov

BERKELEY, CA — Three years ago, “ultraconserved elements” were discovered in the genomes of mice, rats, and humans. These are DNA sequences 200 base pairs in length or longer — some are over 700 base pairs long — showing 100-percent identity among the three species. They have been [...]

Contact: Paul Preuss, (510) 486-6249, paul_preuss@lbl.gov

BERKELEY, CA — Not so long ago, the difficult-to-sequence, highly repetitive, gene-poor DNA found in regions of chromosomes known as heterochromatin was called “junk.” Like dark matter in the universe, the true nature of heterochromatin was unknown.

A diagram of Drosophila’s centromeric heterochromatin, which extends toward the center of the chromosomes [...]

Contact: Paul Preuss, (510) 486-6249 paul_preuss@lbl.gov

BERKELEY, CA — The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today (May 14) announced the first grants in a four-year, $57 million effort to identify the functional elements in the genomes of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.

The National Human Genome Research Institute has awarded grants to [...]

Contact: Paul Preuss, paul_preuss@lbl.gov

Two hours after the egg is fertilized, the embryo of Drosophila melanogaster reaches the blastoderm stage, during which the future fruit fly’s development is a hotbed of activity. Some 6,000 distinct nuclei in the egg’s single cell migrate to the surface, where they are enveloped by membranes and, within about half an [...]

Contact: Paul Preuss, paul_preuss@lbl.gov

Fruit flies are only a couple of millimeters long, and even close up they don’t look much like people. So if you’re a researcher who wants to learn something about genetics in human development and disease, why would you bother with Drosophila melanogaster?

Drosophila melanogaster is an invaluable model organism, partly because [...]

Contact: Paul Preuss, paul_preuss@lbl.gov

As normal cells turn cancerous and develop into tumors, their genomes accumulate tell-tale changes. Some changes involve gene amplification, meaning they accumulate multiple copies and cause genes to overexpress the proteins they code for. Other changes involve gene deletion, which leads to reduced gene expression. Many of these changes may affect genes [...]

Contact: Lynn Yarris (510) 486-5375, LCYarris@lbl.gov
Scientific Contact: Edward Rubin at EMRubin@lbl.gov

BERKELEY, CA —The veil of mystery surrounding our extinct hominid cousins, the Neanderthals, has been at least partially lifted to reveal surprising results. Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) have sequenced [...]

Contact: Lynn Yarris (510) 486-5375, lcyarris@lbl.gov

BERKELEY, CA — The stickiness of human neurons may have been a key factor in why the human brain evolved beyond the brains of our primate relatives. In a study comparing the genomes of humans, chimpanzees, mice and other vertebrates, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National [...]

Contact: Lynn Yarris (510) 486-5375, lcyarris@lbl.gov

BERKELEY, CA — With genome sequencing having reached nearly a mass-production mode and new genes being identified on a regular basis, there is a growing demand for faster methods of identifying the structures of the proteins and nucleic acids being produced by these genes. Two new grants to researchers [...]

Contact: Paul Preuss, (510) 486-6249, paul_preuss@lbl.gov

BERKELEY, CA — The newly established Berkeley Cancer Genome Center, led by members of the Life Sciences Division in the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is one of seven Cancer Genome Characterization Centers to receive awards from the National Cancer Institute and the National Human Genome Research [...]