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An international team of researchers has discovered the vast majority of the so-called “dark matter” in the human genome, by means of a sweeping comparison of 29 mammalian genomes. The team, led by scientists from the ӳý, has pinpointed the parts of the human genome that control when and where genes are turned on. This map is a critical step in interpreting the thousands of genetic changes that have been linked to human disease. Their findings appear online October 12 in the journal Nature.

Myotubes

In the tiny, pinhead-sized wells of a microplate, cultured muscle cells begin to twitch. These mouse cells can grow into long, hearty strands in culture. But when these tendril-like cells are exposed to statins – a drug taken by millions of people to lower cholesterol levels –they start to wither away, mirroring what may be happening in the muscles of some patients.

MizBee's genome view.

After completing graduate school, computational scientist Miriah Meyer noticed a disappointing trend in data visualization. “Our field is usually about generalities,” she says. “We create algorithms or systems that are very general for some broad class of problems or types of data.” But Miriah saw that these solutions, especially those for the analysis of biological data, often didn’t help answer the specific questions of scientists using them.