After 9-month national search, Nigel Mouncey, currently Research and Development Director for Bioengineering and Bioprocessing at Dow AgroSciences LLC, has been selected as the Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility. Mouncey will be the DOE JGI’s fourth Director in its 20-year history. He succeeds Eddy Rubin, who announced his retirement in March 2016 after a dozen years as Director, and DOE JGI Strategic Planning Deputy Axel Visel, who has served as Interim Director since then. Read more about Mouncey’s selection on the DOE JGI website.
Understanding the Genes Behind Some of Evolution’s Most Dramatic Changes
A research team led by biologist senior staff scientist Axel Visel, affiliated with the Environmental Genomics & Systems Biology Division, delved into the genetic basis for why snakes have no legs. The team’s research results demonstrated changes in a regulatory sequence associated with a major body plan transition and highlight the role of enhancers in morphological evolution.
Their findings, published in the journal Cell on October 20, have been widely covered in both national and international news media. The publication coincided with a Current Biology article in press (2016) by Leal and Cohn from the University of Florida who also looked at the mystery of how snake limbs vanished. This Washington Post article describes the approaches both teams took to come up with corroborating results.
For Normal Heart Function, Look Beyond the Genes
Researchers have shown that when parts of a genome known as enhancers are missing, the heart works abnormally, a finding that bolsters the importance of DNA segments once considered “junk” because they do not code for specific proteins. The study, led by Environmental Genomics & Systems Biology (EGSB) Division scientists Diane Dickel, Axel Visel and Len Pennacchio, appears in the journal Nature Communications. The team included other members of EGSB’s Mammalian Functional Genomics Laboratory and collaborators from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and UC San Diego.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk Visits JBEI
The Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI) welcomed the Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on June 4. Premier Palaszczuk visited the Bay Area with a contingent of almost 100 Queensland business, industry and community leaders who attended the BIO 2016 conference in San Francisco.
During the visit to JBEI, Premier Palaszczuk was given an overview by JBEI’s CEO Jay Keasling on the institute’s mission and achievements which was followed by presentations on the collaborative projects between the University of Queensland, JBEI and the DOE Joint Genome Institute. Blake Simmons, JBEI’s Chief Science and Technology Officer and Axel Visel, Interim Director of the DOE Joint Genome Institute gave presentations on the current collaborations with the University of Queensland.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 4
- 5
- 6
Was this page useful?
Send
