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Few things rival the educational value of a well told story. With its weekly content, Science magazine has now embraced this theme — "virtually." Science has developed a new multimedia tool that showcases its recent scientific articles in an online seminar, which is narrated by the contributing scientists themselves and is open to a worldwide audience. The first of the new online seminars appears with the June 16 issue of Science and describes a review article by Ó³»­´«Ã½ scientists on recent efforts to survey the human genome for evidence of natural selection.

The web-based tutorials introduced by Science magazine paint groundbreaking science in broad strokes, providing both historical context and perspective. The authors of a selected Science article describe their work in an online slide presentation that is synchronized with an audio recording of their voices. In addition to summarizing the latest research findings, scientists explain the motivations for their research, the methods used in their field of study, and the scientific promise and challenges that lie ahead. The Office of Publishing and Member Services at AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) has partnered with the company, Biocompare, to produce the seminars, which are freely available and targeted to a wide audience.

The June 16 issue of Science magazine marks the debut of the first online seminar, which draws its inspiration from a review article written by Ó³»­´«Ã½ scientists that appears in the same issue. The research group includes first authors Pardis Sabeti and Stephen Schaffner, as well as co-authors Ben Fry, Jason Lohmueller, Patrick Varilly, Oleg Shamovsky, Alejandro Palma, Tarjei Mikkelsen, Program in Medical and Population Genetics director David Altshuler, and Ó³»­´«Ã½ director Eric Lander.

In the inaugural seminar, Schaffner and Sabeti describe the recent work they and their colleagues have done to unearth the portions of the human genome that have been subject to positive evolutionary selection. A particular trait is "selected" if it makes an individual more likely to survive and pass on its DNA. When this occurs, the frequency of the trait — and the gene (or genes) encoding it — tend to rise quickly within the population. This propensity also leaves behind distinct genetic trademarks that Ó³»­´«Ã½ scientists and others have used to track selected regions throughout the human genome. As several of these regions are associated with human disease, scientists hope that further analyses may lead to insights into their biological function.

Paper cited:

Sabeti PC, Schaffner SF, Fry B, Lohmueller J, Varilly P, Shamovsky O, Palma A, Mikkelsen TS, Altshuler D, Lander ES. (2006). . Science doi:10.1126/science.1124309