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The focus of last night’s Midsummer Nights' Science Lecture at the Ó³»­´«Ã½ lecture was diabetes –a disease that affects more than 171 million people worldwide. Bridget Wagner, a group leader in pancreatic biology and metabolic disease in the Chemical Biology Program at the Ó³»­´«Ã½, spoke about the past and present of diabetes, as well as her group’s progress towards identifying small molecules that may someday be used to control diabetes.

Since I work at a world-class institution where I encounter genetics and genomics research daily, it is only right to acknowledge the birthday of Gregor Johann Mendel (1852-1884), the Austrian friar whose puttering in the garden led to more than just the day’s edibles.

The zebrafish has emerged as one of the most commonly used organisms in scientific research. They are genetically malleable, have transparent embryonic bodies, develop rapidly and are the most complex vertebrate that can be used for large-scale screening –a combination that makes zebrafish a relatively easy-to-screen model for human disease. has upgraded the zebrafish model’s status to really-fast-and-easy-to-screen.

In case you missed it, I want to draw your attention to an that aired on July 12: Charlie Rose dedicated that show to the "ten year anniversary" of the announcement that the human genome draft had been completed.