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Finding the causal genes at disease- and trait-associated loci is key to revealing biological insights from genome-wide association studies. , a team led by researchers from the ӳý and Boston Children’s Hospital, along with Dutch colleagues, describe , a new computational tool that uses predicted gene functions to prioritize the most likely causal genes, highlight enriched pathways, and identify tissues and cell types associated with diseases and complex traits.

Recently , researchers reported on a new, high-throughput experimental method that, combined with massively parallel RNA sequencing and robust systems-level analyses, was used to characterize the transcriptome of three neuron populations in the neocortex. The team, which was led by researchers from the ӳý and Harvard University’s Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, have made this transcriptome data available in an intuitive, web-based resource called .

ӳý associate member Sridhar Ramaswamy led a study that identified a signaling pathway responsible for the generation of slowly proliferating cancer cells. Because they reproduce at a different rate than other cells that are targeted for treatment, these cancer cells can be hard to eradicate and difficult to detect, and they are thought to be a cause of disease relapse. You can in Molecular Cancer Research, or learn more in the  from the American Association for Cancer Research.

CD8+ T cell differentiation into effector and memory T cells is critical for tumor immunity, pathogen response, and vaccine effectiveness, but to date researchers have not been able to use standard methods to study the factors involved in the process without first extensively manipulating naive T cells ex vivo, making the biology difficult to understand. ӳý researchers Nick Haining, Glenn Cowley, David Root, Arlene Sharpe, and colleagues, including first author Jernej Godec of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, describe overcoming this obstacle in a recent .

Christopher Burge and Yarden Katz of the ӳý and MIT were co-senior author and co-first author respectively of a recent that was featured in Science magazine’s “” section. Their team found that Musashi proteins, a family of RNA-binding proteins, play a role in regulating cell state transitions in cancer – particularly in an aggressive form of breast cancer. The study was also covered in .