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If you stand in the lobby of the ӳý, it’s hard not to notice the movement of mammals above your head. A 17-foot wide mobile that hangs from the lobby’s ceiling includes the silhouettes of a chimpanzee, two-toed sloth, alpaca, little brown bat, elephant, dolphin, and more. Each of the depicted mammals gently swaying from the mobile’s branches has had its genome sequenced at the ӳý, the Genome Institute at Washington University, or the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center.

By now most of us have grown accustomed to – if not entirely comfortable with – the knowledge that we share our bodies with countless microbes. Good and bad, our skin, our mouths, and our guts teem with them. Scientists are now training next-generation sequencing technologies on these bugs, turning up surprises that may shed light on human disease, including cancer.

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.