BIOINFORMATICS: Genome ABCs
To speed the process of understanding the human genome, scientists are turning to computational means. For the past five years, a team led by Martha Bulyk has been devising algorithms that systematize genome parsing. Her team recently developed PhylCRM (pronounced “fulcrum”) and Lever, a pair of algorithms that make predictions about where transcription factors bind on the genome and which genes and biological functions they regulate as a consequence. The work appears in the March Nature Methods and is helping to direct experimental research and accelerate the discovery of transcriptional regulatory networks.

STRATEGIC PLANNING: Strategic Advisory Group Makes Recommendations for Education
As part of Dean Jeffrey Flier’s strategic planning process, the Strategic Advisory Group on Education (SAGE), has developed initial recommendations for restructuring some aspects of medical education. One of these is to add a mandatory scholarly project to the curriculum; another is to increase the number of students in the MD–PhD program. Thomas Michel (pictured) and Orah Platt head the advisory group, which is soliciting comments from the greater HMS community.

STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY : Grid Eases Computer Burdens of Wired Scientists
Like most of us, structural biologists want their computers to run smoothly and quickly without having to program and maintain the machines themselves. They need occasional intensive computing power and a dozen or more complex software applications to turn volumes of data into precise molecular pictures, but they would rather be focusing on discovering the shape of molecules than compiling code. Now they can, thanks to HMS structural biologist Piotr Sliz and his SBGrid technology team. SBGrid is transforming structural biology in unexpected ways, making the tools and techniques available to more scientists coast to coast and overseas, and enabling structural specialists to tackle tougher problems.

HEALTH POLICY: Disparities in Health Appear Preventable
A new report shows that health disparities have undergone a surprising reversal in the past 40 years. In a study unprecedented in temporal scope, Nancy Krieger and colleagues compared the number of premature deaths—infant deaths and deaths of those under age 65—in white and nonwhite Americans of different socioeconomic classes from 1960 to 2002. They found that around 1966, mortality rates of the two groups underwent a progressive convergence, a trend that continued to around 1980, at which point the rates began to diverge. The study appears in the February PLoS Medicine.

Copyright 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College