Researchers Track Hammerhead Shark Fins To Source Using DNA Barcodes

December 01, 2009

By Andrea Anderson

Scientists used mitochondrial DNA barcodes to trace scalloped hammerhead shark fins found at a Hong Kong market back to geographical areas around the world, including western Atlantic regions where the shark is considered endangered.

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Young Investigator Profile

Christopher Maher

University of Michigan Medical School
Research Investigator

Gene Fusions and Transcriptome Sequencing

Christopher Maher is focused on elucidating gene fusions, which he first became acquainted with during his potdoctoral work at the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology. Maher hopes to continue discovering novel gene fusions as well as draw new findings out of already-known gene fusions. Last year, he published a paper in Nature in January of 2009 entitled "Transcriptome sequencing to detect gene fusions in cancer," which he says provides a validation for the approach of using next-gen sequencing to find gene fusions in cancer. This was followed up by a PNAS paper in July which demonstrated the gene fusion concept using paired-end transcriptome sequencing.
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Papers of Note

Regulation and Function of miR-218 in Gastric Cancer Metastasis
Tie, Pan et al., PLoS Genetics
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Method to Label and Isolate N-terminal Peptides from Human Plasma
Wildes and Wells, PNAS
A pair of researchers report their method to “dramatically reduce the complexity” of human serum samples by eliminating internal peptides. The authors write that, with their method, it's possible to identify substrates from specific proteases with the exogenous addition of the protease along with N-terminal isolation and quantitative mass spectrometry.
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Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute Professor Leena Peltonen-Palotie died this week of cancer at her home in Finland, according to the Sanger Institute. Peltonen-Palotie was head of human genetics at Wellcome Trust, and she held appointments at the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard and the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland.

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Bruker will acquire certain mass spectrometry and chromatography product lines from Varian, clearing the way for Agilent to complete its $1.5 billion acquisition of Varian. The divestitures were part of conditions set by EU authorities for approval of the merger.
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Researchers Track Hammerhead Shark Fins To Source Using DNA Barcodes

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