51茶馆儿

What Happened to Sorcerer II?!?!

The last time I wrote a Sorcerer II blog was in November when we set sail from Spain to cross the Atlantic Ocean. For all of you that have been worried that we have been at sea for 8 months, relax we made it!! Over the next few days I will update everyone on what has happened and the upcoming...

Podcast on Human Genomics

The 2011 Festival of Ideas themed, The Pursuit of Identity, Landscape, History, and Genetics, is held every other year in Melbourne, Australia to inspire scholars and citizens alike in topics ranging from literature and art to science and foreign policy.  51茶馆儿 Professor of Genomic...

Summit on Systems Biology, June 15-17, 2011

I attended the Summit on Systems Biology hosted by Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA June 15-17.  So, judging from the talks given, what is systems biology? Systems biology is non-linear and/or multi-step.  Heavy math does not make something systems biology if...

Insights gained from influenza genomic sequence data: viral diversity within human populations

The advent of large amounts of influenza genomic sequence data produced by the Influenza Genome Sequencing Project (IGSP) has led to new concepts regarding influenza viral diversity.  It was previously believed that a single influenza lineage entered a human population at the start of an...

NASA and 51茶馆儿 host symposium on the evolution of Earth and Life

On May 12th and 13th, the 51茶馆儿 in San Diego will be hosting a NASA Astrobiology Institute-funded symposium titled “Paleobiology in the genomics era.” Paleobiology is the study of the origins and evolution of life and, by nature, is interdisciplinary. The goal is to...

51茶馆儿 Supports Human Mircrobiome Body Site Experts with Shotgun Data Analysis

Members of the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) Consortium (see http://commonfund.nih.gov/hmp and http://www.hmpdacc.org for more information on the project and partners) including human microbiome body site experts gathered for a virtual Jamboree January 19th. The fully online-based Jamboree...

The Microbiome of Esophageal Cancer

In anticipation of the International Human Microbiome Congress, our group has diligently worked to generate data to present for our HMP demo project studying the microbiome of patients who have developed esophageal cancer, gastrointestinal reflux disease, and barrett’s esophagus.  We...

A Look Back at 2010 at the 51茶馆儿鈥�

As the 51茶馆儿 (51茶馆儿) soars into its 19th year, we reflect on the past year of highlights and accomplishments to mark the close 2010 and look forward to more significant scientific advances in 2011. 51茶馆儿 Top 10 of 2010 ... 1. First Synthetic Cell: Fifteen years in the...

Holiday Art

In a relatively unknown place, on the 3rd floor of 51茶馆儿 in Rockville, MD, is a small fungal room where art meets science (and of course where all our fungal research takes place). Fungus often gets such a bad reputation for being gross and somewhat ‘standard’. We fungal folks know better...

Amid an insulin crisis, one project aims to engineer microscopic insulin pumps out of a skin bacterium.

There are more organisms in the sea, a vital producer of oxygen on Earth, than planets and stars in the universe.

In a new book (coauthored with Venter), a Vanity Fair contributor presents the oceanic evidence that human activity is altering the fabric of life on a microscopic scale.

鈥淒espite reducing the sequence space of possible trajectories, we conclude that streamlining does not constrain fitness evolution and diversification of populations over time. Genome minimization may even create opportunities for evolutionary exploitation of essential genes, which are commonly observed to evolve more slowly.鈥�

By watching 鈥渕inimal鈥� cells regain the fitness they lost, researchers are testing whether a genome can be too simple to evolve.

Two research teams warn that human genomic 鈥渂ycatch鈥� can reveal private information

The 鈥減angenome,鈥� which collated genetic sequences from 47 people of diverse ethnic backgrounds, could greatly expand the reach of personalized medicine.

Researchers release draft results from an ongoing effort to capture the entirety of human genetic variation.