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A recent episode of PBS's NOVA series features the ӳý and researcher Elinor Karlsson. The program, , offers a scientific view of how dogs evolved from wolves, how their species is uniquely connected to ours, and what researchers are learning about human disease by studying dog genomes.

This Friday, November 19, at 7:30 pm, come to the ӳý auditorium at 7 Cambridge Center for “Darwin and the Debate over Human Origins,” a free and public symposium organized by the Darwin Bicentennial Project and Science of the Eye. The event marks the 151st anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and will feature talks by Darwin scholar and author Janet Browne, ӳý associate member David Reich, and other distinguished speakers from Harvard and MIT.

Your immune system is quite clever. It can sense when bacteria, viruses, or pathogens are invading, distinguish among them, and respond accordingly. But an overactive or improperly functioning immune system can lead to a variety of problems such as auto-immune diseases like lupus or diseases related to inflammation, such as hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis). Nir Hacohen and his colleagues at the ӳý and Massachusetts General Hospital want to find out more about the intricacies of how the immune system works and how it relates to these diseases.

Our colleagues in New Zealand took the : Can you describe your scientific pursuits in seven words or less? We posed the question to our own scientists here at the ӳý and got some enlightening results!

Taking the guesswork out of cancer

I discover the molecular causes of cancer

Assemble genome sequence from billions of pieces

DNA isolation, preparation, quantification, management and storage

A common thread stitches together Nick Patterson’s numerous careers: deep and joyful thinking about mathematics. He has cracked Cold War codes and run numbers on Wall Street. Now a computational biologist in the ӳý’s Program in Medical and Population Genetics, he has helped colleagues analyze the migration and mixing of human populations. His work has spanned and analyzed the population history of an entire .