Ahituv		Pennacchio		Rubin

Ultraconserved Elements
In Genome Indispensable?

“Ultraconserved elements" have been perfectly conserved since the last common ancestor of mice, rats, and humans, some 85 million years ago. These and other highly conserved genomic sequences, discovered three years ago, are thought to have persisted with little or no change because they perform functions vital for viability or reproduction. However, Nadav Ahituv and Len Pennacchio, with Berkeley Lab’s Genomics Division, and Edward Rubin, director of the division, found that mice lacking an ultraconserved element showed almost no ill effects at all. Full story.

Primack Gives Lab Talk
On 'Beyond Einstein' Report

Primack

Joel Primack, leading cosmologist and member of the National Research Council's Beyond Einstein Program Assessment Committee (BEPAC), will appear in the Bldg. 50 auditorium at 10 a.m. tomorrow to discuss BEPAC's conclusions, which will be released later today. Before 2004, NASA's Beyond Einstein program comprised ambitious missions to explore cosmological questions such as the nature of dark energy -- indefinitely postponed when NASA's emphasis shifted to the Moon and Mars. Under pressure from Congress, BEPAC was formed to advise on how to restart the program. Primack will explain the report's proposed strategy for continued U.S. exploration of the universe. Go here for an abstract.

Lab and Campus Team Study Nuclear Detection

Siegrist

What do a terrorist nuke, bananas and kitty litter have in common? Because they all give off gamma rays, they can look the same to a radiation-detector. This highlights a critical problem: How can screeners find smuggled nuclear materials without slowing the inspection of imported goods to an economy-crippling crawl? A team of UC Berkeley researchers — including Berkeley Lab Physics Division Director Jim Siegrist — has just begun to tackle the dilemma. It's a key part of a new Academic Research Initiative sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security to tap the brainpower of the nation's best university scientists. Full story.

In the Genome Race,
The Sequel Is Personal

A consortium of government-financed academic centers announced in 2003 it had completed the human genome, fending off a determined challenge from the biologist J. Craig Venter. The consortium’s genome comprised just half the DNA contained in a normal cell, and the DNA used in the project came from a group of people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. But Venter could still have the last word. In a paper published yesterday, his research team announced that it has decoded a new version of the human genome that some experts believe may be better than the consortium’s. “I don’t want to fan the fires but I like this, it’s a really good genome,” said Edward Rubin, director of the Genomics Division at Berkeley Lab. Full story.