Category: News
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New managing director brings business and scientific expertise to the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute
By Branwyn Wagman The UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute has taken on a new managing director, Ravi Jain, to serve alongside scientific director David Haussler and oversee the institute’s strategic planning, business development, and operations, among other responsibilities. Jain comes to UC Santa Cruz after serving as president and CEO of cBio, a software development…
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UC startups invited to compete for chance at $300,000 in award money
By UC Office of the President Startup companies from the University of California are invited to compete for a total of $300,000 in award money during the first primeUC competition, part of President Janet Napolitano’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative, it was announced today (Aug. 4). In what is hoped will be the first of several…
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New method reveals hidden population of regulatory molecules in cells
By Tim Stephens, UCSC Public Information Office A recently discovered family of small RNA molecules, some of which have been implicated in cancer progression, has just gotten much larger thanks to a new RNA sequencing technique developed by researchers at UC Santa Cruz. The technique, described in a paper published August 3 in Nature Methods,…
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California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine funds UC Santa Cruz pediatric cancer project
By Tim Stephens, UCSC Public Information Office The California Kids Cancer Comparison project led by the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute is one of two demonstration projects selected by the new California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine, a public-private effort launched by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. The initiative is being hosted by UC San…
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Surfing the web of life
By Peggy Townsend, UCSC Public Information Office In the dark hour that is 3:30 a.m., Bill Saxton will often rise from his bed, pull on a wetsuit, and head for the surf spot called Steamer Lane. There, the UC Santa Cruz professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology will slip into the water and, against…
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Keck Foundation awards UC Santa Cruz $2 million for human genome variation project
By Tim Stephens, UCSC Public Information Office The UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute has received a $2 million grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation for ongoing research to develop a comprehensive map of human genetic variation. The Human Genome Variation Map will be a valuable new resource for medical researchers, as well as for…
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Why you should share your genetic profile
By David Haussler This first appeared in the Opinion section of the San Francisco Chronicle on July 16, 2015 Fifteen years ago, a scrappy team of computer geeks at UC Santa Cruz assembled the first complete draft of the human genome from DNA data generated by a global consortium, giving humanity its first glimpse of…
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UC Santa Cruz pediatric cancer project receives $250,000 to fight high-risk neuroblastoma
By Kayla Bernard and Branwyn Wagman Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) has awarded the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute an innovation grant of $250,000 over two years to advance research on two groundbreaking approaches for identifying treatment options for children with neuroblastoma. “Neuroblastoma is one of the most enigmatic pediatric cancers,” said postdoctoral scholar Olena…
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Banana slug genome project makes progress
By Branwyn Wagman Can a class of 17 graduate students and undergrads make a continuous genome from the A’s, C’s, T’s, and G’s that comprise the banana slug genome? The short answer: partially. The banana slug genome seems to be as quirky as the banana slug itself and has already yielded curious findings. In spring…
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Pediatric advocacy group supports UC Santa Cruz childhood cancer genomics initiative
By Branwyn Wagman The Treehouse Childhood Cancer Project, part of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, has received $30,000 from Unravel Pediatric Cancer to pave the way for accepting individual patient genomes for analysis. Treehouse Project scientists are developing a genome comparison method that can suggest new treatment leads for childhood cancer patients currently considered…
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A visionary, a genius, and the human genome
By Peggy Townsend It was May 2000, the race to sequence the human genome was on, and UC Santa Cruz Biomolecular Engineering Professor David Haussler was worried. A private firm named Celera Genomics was beating a path to the prize with a big budget and what was reported to be the most powerful computer cluster…
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Community effort provides new ‘gold standard’ for genomic data analysis
By Tim Stephens, UCSC Public Information Office A coalition of leaders in the cancer genomics research community has published the first findings from a project to develop robust methods for detecting cancer mutations. The results, published May 18 in Nature Methods, provide an important new benchmark for researchers, helping to define the most accurate methods…