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| Monday, March 21, 2011
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12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
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1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
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| Wednesday, March 23, 2011
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4:30 PM - 5:45 PM
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The $1,000 Genome: The revolution in DNA sequencing and the new era of personalized medicine
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| Description: |
Genetics in Medicine Lecture sponsored by the Countway Library of Medicine & The Partners Health Care Center for Personalized Genetic Medicine - a lecture - booksigning - reception.
Countway Library of Medicine
10 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA
Lecture - Minot Room, book signing and reception in the Lahey Room, both on the fifth floor of Countway
2011 marks not only the tenth anniversary of the first draft of the human genome but also the year that researchers coined the catchphrase “the $1,000 genome.” Remarkably, thanks to astonishing progress in the development of “next-generation” sequencing technologies that are outstripping Moore’s Law, that goal is almost a reality. Companies are already sequencing and annotating complete human genomes for less than $10,000. In addition to a growing number of celebrity genomes, encouraging examples of clinical whole-genome sequencing, particularly in pediatrics and oncology, have been published. The problem ahead is not so much the cost of sequencing but what some are calling “the $1-million interpretation.” Davies will discuss the latest progress and prospects in next-generation sequencing technologies with a focus on their clinical and diagnostic applications, as well as issues surrounding the delivery of that information to the public.
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| Contact: |
Roz Vogel
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| Thursday, March 24, 2011
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Noon - 1:00 PM
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Linking the human microbiome to disease state
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| Description: |
Location: The Forsyth Institute, Seminar Room A
245 First Street, 17th floor
Cambridge
Speaker: Anthony Fodor, PhD
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Bioinformatics and Genomics
University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Abstract: In a typical 16s rRNA human microbiome next-generation sequencing project, the vast majority of sequencing reads come from taxa that have been previously observed. The diversity of commonly occurring human-associated microbes does not, therefore, appear to be infinite. This is encouraging in suggesting that studies that attempt to associate human disease to microbiome state will not automatically fail for lack of power. In this talk, I report on 454-based studies of the human-associated microbiome for which my lab has performed the primary analysis. We have discovered (i) a pair of microbes within human stool that demonstrate strong predictive power for which human subjects will develop fatty liver when challenged with a low-choline diet; (ii) a surprisingly large set of taxa from mucosal biopsies that can discriminate adenoma case subjects from non-ademona control in a study of human colorectal cancer and (iii) a pronounced correlation between community richness and evenness and severity of patient symptoms in the microbial community isolated from sputum samples of Cystic Fibrosis patients. In these diverse studies from distinct patient populations, we were able to find specific associations of the microbiome with disease that were of sufficient magnitude to remain statically significant even after correction for the testing of multiple hypotheses. Significant challenges remain in establishing reproducibility in new patient cohorts as well as determining whether changes in the human microbiome drive disease state or vice-versa. Nonetheless, our results demonstrate the great potential of new sequencing technology for linking the state of the human microbiome with important disease phenotypes.
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Pam Quattrocchi
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4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
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4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
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| Friday, March 25, 2011
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8:30 AM - 9:30 AM
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Robustness and sensitivity among synonymous codons
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| Description: |
Speaker: Arvind Subramaniam (FAS-Center for Systems Biology)
Location: Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE), 24 Oxford St, 3rd Floor, Room 310
Notes: MSI Weekly Chalktalk! Please join us for coffee/tea/pastries at 8:30 AM, followed by the chalktalk at 8:45.
http://www.msi.harvard.edu/fridays.html
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| Contact: |
Andrea Lenco
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1:30 PM - 2:45 PM
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Week of Sunday, March 20, 2011
