Connection Between Epigenome, Selective Mutability, Evolution, and Human Disease
Li, Harris et al., PLoS Genetics
Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine and elsewhere propose a "connection between the epigenome, selective mutability, evolution, and human disease" based on the findings of their study on associations of structural mutability with germline DNA methylation and with non-allelic homologous recombination mediated by low-copy repeats. "Combined evidence from four human sperm methylome maps, human genome evolution, structural polymorphisms in the human population, and previous genomic and disease studies consistently points to a strong association of germline hypomethylation and genomic instability," the Baylor-led team writes.
SDSC Expands Flash-Based Supercomputer Development
The San Diego Supercomputer Center has added another supercomputer to its growing arsenal of flash memory-based systems. Named "Trestles," the new system was built with a $2.8 million award from the National Science Foundation and will be made available to researchers as part of TeraGrid. With 10,368 processor cores, a peak speed of 100 teraflops, 20 terabytes of memory, and 38 terabytes of flash memory, Trestles will be among the five largest HPC systems in the TeraGrid network. Flash, also known as solid-state memory, is a form of memory that is standard in many devices including mobile phones, laptop computers, and USB drives. Relatively new to the world of large-scale computing, SDSC is exploring how best to exploit to the benefits of flash memory in supercomputers. The advantages include in I/O speed and more significantly, power savings, as they have no moving parts unlike disk-based memory with its spinning motorized components.
SDSC's other flash memory supercomputers currently include the Dash system and the larger Gordon, which is slated to become operational later this year.
Bridget Carragher and Clint Potter, directors at the National Resource for Automated Molecular Microscopy at The Scripps Research Institute, have already utilized Trestles with some success. Their project focuses on establishing a portal on the TeraGrid for structural biology researchers to facilitate electron microscopy image processing using the Appion pipeline, an integrated database-driven system. "We are very excited about this early opportunity to use the Trestles infrastructure for high performance structural biology projects," says Carragher in a release announcing the new system. "Based on our initial experience, we are optimistic that this system will have a dramatic impact on the scale of projects we can undertake, and on the resolution that can be achieved for macromolecular structure."