all Eric Lander stories

Eli and Edythe L. Broad endow the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT with additional $400 million

404132862 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:12:08 -0400

Los Angeles-based philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad today declared the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT an unprecedented success as an experiment in science and philanthropy, and announced that they have increased their total gift to the Broad by $400 million to $600 million. The $400 million will be an endowment to convert the institute — which was originally launched as a 10-year “venture” experiment — into a permanent biomedical research organization aimed at transforming medicine.

Scientists use genomic tools to create maps of DNA methylation

404132862 — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:08:26 -0400

Much of the field of stem cell biology and development remains uncharted territory. Just as famous explorers and astronomers mapped out landmasses and constellations, researchers are working fervently to chart the molecular landscapes within stem cells — especially embryonic stem cells. A clearer understanding of the cells’ unique properties, particularly their ability to give rise to nearly any type of cell, could unlock fundamental questions about biology and may even spur novel ways to treat disease.

Scientists Decode Genomes of Diverse TB Isolates

404132862 — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:17:18 -0500

An international collaboration led by researchers in the US and South Africa today announced the first genome sequence of an extensively drug resistant (XDR) strain of the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, one linked to more than 50 deaths in a recent tuberculosis (TB) outbreak in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Study paints genetic portrait of lung cancer

404132862 — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 11:37:32 -0500

An international team of scientists today announced the results of a systematic effort to map the genetic changes underlying lung cancer, the world’s leading cause of cancer deaths.

Appearing in the November 4 advance online issue of the journal Nature, the research provides a comprehensive view of the abnormal genetic landscape in lung cancer cells, revealing more than 50 genomic regions that are frequently gained or lost in human lung tumors. While one-third of these regions contain genes already known to play important roles in lung cancer, the majority harbor new genes yet to be discovered.

Opossum genome shows 'junk' DNA source of genetic innovation

50443248 — Wed, 09 May 2007 16:51:38 -0400

A tiny opossum's genome has shed light on how evolution creates new creatures from old, showing that change primarily comes by finding new ways of turning existing genes on and off.

The research, by an international consortium led by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, revises our understanding of genetic evolution. Scientists previously thought that evolution slowly changed the genes that create specific proteins. As the proteins changed, so did the creatures that owned them.

The current research shows that opossum and human protein-coding genes have changed little since their ancestors parted ways, 180 million years ago. It has been the regulation of their genes - when they turn on and off - that has changed dramatically.

"Evolution is tinkering much more with the controls than it is with the genes themselves," said Broad Institute director Eric Lander. "Almost all of the new innovation ... is in the regulatory controls. In fact, marsupial mammals and placental mammals have largely the same set of protein-coding genes. But by contrast, 20 percent of the regulatory instructions in the human genome were invented after we parted ways with the marsupial."

The research, released May 9 also illustrated a mechanism for those regulatory changes. It showed that an important source of genetic innovation comes from bits of DNA, called transposons, that make up roughly half of our genome and that were previously thought to be genetic "junk."

The research shows that this so-called junk DNA is anything but, and that it instead can help drive evolution by moving between chromosomes, turning genes on and off in new ways.

HSPH, Broad map malaria genetic diversity

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:46:55 -0400

Researchers have created the first map of genetic diversity of the malaria parasite, providing new insights in the fight against a public health scourge that kills one person every 30 seconds.

In work that focused on the most deadly of the four malaria parasites that infect humans, Plasmodium falciparum, researchers found nearly double the diversity they expected. They also identified genetic regions linked to resistance to two anti-malarial drugs.

The advance, by an international team led by researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), can rapidly translate to improvements on the ground, such as better diagnosis of specific malaria strains and monitoring for the emergence of drug resistance, according to Dyann Wirth, chair of the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, co-director of the Broad Institute's Infectious Disease Initiative, and the study's senior author.

"One of the immediate applications is that we should be able to develop a tool to detect the emergence of drug resistance in populations and map its spread," Wirth said.

The early detection of drug resistance is critical in better managing the disease. If doctors understand early on that a patient is infected with a strain resistant to a particular drug, they can use other medications and strategies to fight the disease, rather than a blind trial-and-error approach.

"This is a way for one to get ahead of the curve, instead of waiting for clinical failure," Wirth said.

The research represents a critical intersection of advancing technology and basic science aimed at understanding the human genome - pioneered under the leadership of Eric Lander at the Broad Institute - and their application to modern public health problems.

Did ancestral humans, chimps interbreed?

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:27:39 -0400

New scientific findings indicate that ancestral humans split from chimpanzee forebears more recently than previously thought and raise the possibility that the two nascent species hybridized before making their final separation.

The surprising findings reveal a much more complicated birth of the human and chimpanzee species than shown by previous research. They also call into question the place on the primate family tree of fossils that scientists had thought were the bones of ancestral humans, but which are older than the newly determined time that the species diverged.

The research, conducted by scientists at Harvard Medical School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, indicates that humans and chimpanzees developed into distinct species less than 6.3 million years ago and probably more recently than 5.4 million years ago. That is about a million years later than the previously accepted range of 6.5 million to 7.4 million years ago.

Researchers made the findings after examining differences between the chimpanzee and human genomes. Because mutations in DNA occur at a steady rate, scientists are able to compare the changes between species and figure out how long ago they last had a common ancestor.

Previous studies have used average figures to get a time that the species split, but scientists have long known that segments of the genetic code are inherited from different ancestors who lived at different times. This study was the first to trace segments back and provide a range of dates within which the common ancestors of humans and chimpanzees lived.

What the results reveal is a surprisingly large range. Different segments of the genome differ in age by about 4 million years, researchers found. That large range of dates could be explained if there had been some genetic exchange between the two developing species over that time.

The parts of the genome traceable to more recent ancestors are clustered on the X chromosome, which could be explained by natural selection working to eliminate unfavorable genes caused by hybridization.

"The data were very, very unexpected and difficult to explain by what we knew," said David Reich, assistant professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.

Reich cautioned that though hybridization would answer several questions raised by the research, the research itself does not prove that hybridization occurred. Further work is needed to explore whether that happened.

The research was published in the May 17, 2006 online edition of the journal Nature.

Dog genome latest DNA to be fully sequenced

50443248 — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:48:22 -0400

Scientists at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT have sequenced the domestic dog's DNA, thanks to the blood of a boxer named Tasha. Now they hope to follow Tasha's genetic code to a new understanding of shared diseases (such as cancer) and the genetic roots of the differences between man and beast.
The unique variation among dog breeds, each of which has specific appearances, behavioral traits, and tendencies toward disease, make the dog an ideal animal for genetic analysis, researchers said.

Dog genome unleashed

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:23:31 -0400

An international research team led by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has decoded the DNA of the domestic dog and pinpointed millions of genetic differences that distinguish dog breeds. The study also includes the first comparative analysis to encompass three distinct mammalian genomes, revealing important DNA elements common among them. Such shared genetic signatures offer crucial insights into genome organization and function, particularly in humans. Their efforts, described in the Dec. 8, 2005 issue of Nature, shed light on the genetic similarities between dogs and humans as well as the genetic differences between dog breeds, and may guide future discoveries that improve the health of both species.

"Of the more than 5,500 mammals living today, dogs are arguably the most remarkable," said senior author Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute, professor of biology at MIT and of systems biology at Harvard Medical School, and a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. "The incredible physical and behavioral diversity of dogs - from chihuahuas to great danes - is encoded in their genomes. It can uniquely help us understand embryonic development, neurobiology, human disease and the basis of evolution."

More than two years ago, the Nature paper's authors embarked on a mission to assemble a complete map of the dog genome. In the first phase of the project they obtained high-quality DNA sequence from a female boxer named "Tasha," covering nearly 99 percent of the dog's genome. Because dogs sit at a key branch point in the evolutionary tree relative to humans, the dog genome sequence enabled researchers to make novel observations regarding the genetic similarities among mammals.

First edition of HapMap released

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:41:20 -0400

A flurry of high-profile scientific manuscripts published in October 2005 describe both the content and uses of HapMap, a catalog that maps human genetic variation and relates it both to disease and to human evolutionary history. HapMap gives scientists worldwide a first good look at the "order in variety" that is the human genome.

All these studies are grounded in data presented in a significant paper published in the Oct. 27, 2005 issue of the journal Nature by an international consortium of more than 200 researchers from Canada, China, Japan, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States. In this paper, the authors describe the patterns of genetic variation in hundreds of human DNA samples collected from four sites around the world.

Perhaps the most striking finding in this mountain of data is the overwhelming evidence for previous work that suggested that human genetic variants located physically close to each other in the genome are collectively inherited as groups, or "haplotypes." The comprehensive catalog of human genetic variation, now known as the "HapMap", is publicly available to the biomedical research community. The implications - and potential value - of the genome's haplotype structure for medicine has only begun to be realized.

"Built upon the foundation laid by the human genome sequence, the HapMap is a powerful new tool for exploring the root causes of common diseases. We absolutely require such a resource so that we can develop new and much-needed approaches to understand these diseases, such as diabetes, bipolar disorder, cancer and many others, " said David Altshuler, director of the program in Medical and Population Genetics of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and associate professor of genetics and of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Altshuler and Peter Donnelly, of the University of Oxford in England, are the corresponding authors of the Nature paper.

Chimp genome effort shines light on human evolution

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:21:59 -0400

A research effort, led by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and the University of Washington, Seattle, focused on the chimpanzee in hopes that genetic comparisons with humanity's closest relative will lead to answers to both practical questions - such as the causes of human disease - and to more fundamental questions on human biology.

In addition to their obvious physical differences, humans and chimpanzees have different responses to Alzheimer's disease, malaria, and HIV/AIDS, for example.

"We're focusing on the differences as a way to shed light on ourselves," said Eric Lander, Broad Institute director and professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School, who led the project along with Richard Wilson of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Robert Waterston of the University of Washington, Seattle. "This is a case where evolutionary analysis is a direct handmaiden to biomedicine."

Among the 3 billion base pairs in the DNA of both humans and chimpanzees, researchers found differences in 40 million sites. It is in those sites where the differences between the two species lie.

Protein packages activate genes

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:17:33 -0400

It's all in the packaging. How nature wraps and tags genes determines if and when they become active, according to researchers from Harvard and M.I.T. They did the largest, most detailed study to date of the protein structure that surrounds the human genome. Their findings reveal surprising and previously unknown specifics of how genes get switched on during development of the human body and in diseases such as cancer. "Each type of cell in our bodies contains the same genes. What makes them do different things involves which genes are turned on," notes Bradley Bernstein, a pathologist at Harvard Medical School. The analysis shows a striking and surprising exception in the way some critical genes are activated by the protein packaging. The big surprise involves clusters of so-called "HOX" genes, which apparently work in concert to control how we develop in the womb. Instead of being activated individually like most genes, the HOX genes appear to be turned on in groups by massive numbers of tags. HOX genes also are deeply involved in cancer, making the findings particularly important. Some of the proteins that regulate HOX genes are capable of causing or suppressing tumors. "Many of the proteins that regulate these genes can suppress or enhance tumor growth," Bernstein notes. "Some of the genes can cause cancer directly when altered by mutations." "The work we're doing now is very fundamental," he says. "But what we learn about the interactions between chromatin, its tags, and various proteins that interact with them may one day be useful for understanding, diagnosing, and even developing new treatments for some cancers."