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Researchers from the Ó³»­´«Ã½ of MIT and Harvard have announced that GenomeSpace, a software environment that seamlessly connects genomic analysis tools, is now available to the scientific community. During her keynote address at Bio-IT World Conference and Expo on Tuesday, Jill Mesirov, director of computational biology and bioinformatics at the Ó³»­´«Ã½, invited biomedical researchers and tool developers to explore this beta release of the new resource and to use it in their work.

The Merkin Family Foundation today announced a commitment to the Ó³»­´«Ã½ of Harvard and MIT to establish the Merkin Institute Fellows, a program that will support some of the most promising and ambitious scientists pursuing bold research at the Ó³»­´«Ã½. The Merkin Family Foundation’s commitment will be used to create the first endowed fellowship program at the Ó³»­´«Ã½ and will provide sustained support for these outstanding scientists as they blaze important new trails in science and medicine.

MCL1 and BCL-xL

A research team pursuing one of the most commonly altered genes in cancer has laid a critical foundation for understanding this gene that could point the way toward developing drugs against it. A recent study of cancer genetics pointed to the gene MCL1, which encodes a protein that helps keep cells alive. The new research pinpoints compounds that repress MCL1’s activity and highlights an important companion gene that predicts if a tumor is dependent upon MCL1 for survival. Together, these tools suggest a path toward new therapeutics directed at MCL1.

Even when everything is in working order, the team in the Ó³»­´«Ã½â€™s Genome Sequencing Platform is never completely satisfied. Someone is always tinkering, inventing, or thinking about a way to strengthen one of the links in the chain of events that leads to sequenced DNA.