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Hysteria, nostalgia, homesickness, railroad spine, shell shock, battle fatigue—posttraumatic stress disorder has been with us for as long as recorded history. Today, PTSD is one of our most common psychiatric disorders—affecting an in the U.S. alone. And yet, despite its prevalence, little is known about the biological roots of this debilitating condition.

After screening a library of over 100,000 small molecules, researchers from the Ó³»­´«Ã½ of MIT and Harvard have identified compounds that act on a novel target in the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. resulted in the publication of a paper (available online September 7 inNature] and an open, data-rich resource for the malaria research community called the(MTRP).

Based on the largest resource of its kind, members of the Exome Aggregation Consortium (ExAC) led by scientists at the Ó³»­´«Ã½ of MIT and Harvard report scientific findings from data on the exome sequences (protein-coding portions of the genome) from 60,706 people from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Containing over 10 million DNA variants – many very rare and most identified for the first time – the ExAC dataset is a freely available, high-resolution catalog of human genetic variation that has already made a major impact on clinical research and diagnosis of rare genetic diseases.