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For the third consecutive year, ӳý researchers have been named to Forbes’ “” list. Among the “young game changers, movers and makers” celebrated for their work in the field was Alex Bick. Bick, who is also a graduate student at Harvard Medical School, was recognized for his research analyzing genetic data to study disease risk and drug response. In this year’s category, Patrick Hsu, a scientist from the lab of ӳý core member Feng Zhang, was lauded for his work with the CRISPR-Cas9 genome-engineering tool, while Eran Hodis, a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, was honored for his role in the discovery of genetic mutations common in cancer.

The ancient Japanese art of origami is based on the idea that nearly any design - a crane, an insect, a samurai warrior - can be made by taking the same blank sheet of paper and folding it in different ways.

The human body faces a similar problem. The genome inside every cell of the body is identical, but the body needs each cell to be different –an immune cell fights off infection; a cone cell helps the eye detect light; the heart’s myocytes must beat endlessly.

The genetic tumult within cancerous tumors is more than matched by the disorder in one of the mechanisms for switching cells’ genes on and off, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the ӳý of MIT and Harvard report in a new study. Their findings, published online today in the journal Cancer Cell, indicate that the disarray in the on-off mechanism – known as methylation – is one of the defining characteristics of cancer and helps tumors adapt to changing circumstances.

A team of investigators from the ӳý, Massachusetts General Hospital and other leading biomedical research institutions has pinpointed rare mutations in a gene called APOA5 that increase a person’s risk of having a heart attack early in life. These mutations disable the APOA5 gene and also raise the levels in the blood of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins, a type of fat. The researchers’ findings, together with other recent genetic discoveries — specifically, the identification of protective mutations in the APOC3 gene that lower triglyceride levels and the risk of heart attack — refocus attention on abnormal triglyceride metabolism as an important risk factor for heart attack at any age. The work — the largest exome sequencing study yet published for any disease — appears this week in the journal Nature.