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Welcome to the new Ó³»­´«Ã½Minded blog, a forum for disseminating the science, culture, and life of the Ó³»­´«Ã½.

This blog is a place for interactive learning about the science underway here at the Ó³»­´«Ã½. Our research spans an astonishing breadth and depth, from decoding the genetic blueprint of a fungus that’s decimating the world’s frog populations to screening thousands of chemicals in the hope of uncovering one that could become a drug to treat depression.

By now the name of Henrietta Lacks, unknown and unsung for decades, is practically a household word. And deservedly so. Although scientists used cells known as HeLa in groundbreaking work that led to the development of polio vaccine and leukemia treatments, among other discoveries, most knew little about the woman who unwittingly bequeathed them. All that changed earlier this year with Rebecca Skloot’s haunting book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Soft-tissue sarcomas are a rare form of cancer, accounting for less than one percent of cancer cases in the United States. But for patients and families dealing with this disease, the cancer is omnipresent. Although most large-scale studies of cancer genomes have focused on common forms of cancer, such as lung cancer, brain cancer, or breast cancer, a paper in the new issue of Nature Genetics sheds new light on many of the genomic alterations found in some types of soft-tissue sarcomas.