The National Institutes of Health announced $45 million in grants to support several research groups that are focused on Alzheimer's prevention. ISB's Price Lab will be working with the University of Florida to use systems biology to identify new therapeutic targets in the innate immune system. The systems approach, which ISB pioneered, allows scientists to integrate and analyze disparate data (genome, gene expression, pathology) in order to find the molecular…
WHAT YOU HEARD IN THE NEWS: NPR aired this story (on Sept. 5) about research just published in the journal Nature Genetics suggesting that tuberculosis may have existed more than 70,000 years ago. Tuberculosis Hitched a Ride When Early Humans Left Africa ‘ “The old, traditional view was that tuberculosis emerged during the Neolithic transition when people started to domesticate animals and develop agriculture, which started about 10,000 years ago,”…
Just as the Seattle tourist traffic picks up in the summer, the intern and visitor traffic at ISB spikes during July and August. It’s always inspiring to see the fresh faces of high school students in our halls. On Aug. 7, the MESA Math Scholars came to ISB to visit our labs and spend some time with a few of our scientists. MESA stands for Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement and…
By Gustavo Glusman, ISB Senior Research Scientist ISB has joined the Global Alliance for responsible sharing of genomic and clinical data. You can read the white paper here. In the last couple of years, we (Family Genomics at ISB) moved from analyzing a handful of genomes (for the Miller Syndrome project) to analyzing over a thousand high-quality whole genomes we have in-house – in addition to the low coverage data…
JUNE 24, 2013 — Dr. Lee Hood, ISB’s president, says that we have to “infect” kids with the excitement of science. The same can be said about their teachers. It may even be more crucial to inspire teachers, because they’re the ones who have the most impact on the greatest number of kids. At ISB, the transfer of knowledge to society is a part of our core. Supporting K-12 science…
Dr. Lee Hood believes that ISB scientists are missionaries who are spreading the power of systems biology. He is always on the road and today (June 24) he’s in Lyon, France, to attend the EISBM Symposium 2013 to give a talk on P4 medicine. Prior to arriving in Lyon, Lee was in Jerusalem to give a talk at the Israeli Presidential Conference, which drew world leaders such as Bill Clinton…
Here’s a piece adapted from Michael Pollan’s latest book “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation” which discusses how processed foods and the modern diet have made us more obese and more likely to get sick. He makes a case for eating more fermented foods that haven’t been pasteurized – probiotics, live-culture foods – in order to get the good bacteria back in our guts. At ISB, the microbiome is an…
By Dana Riley Black, ISB Director for Center for Inquiry Science April 11, 2013 — Earlier this week the new national Next Generation Science Standards were released. (Here’s a New York Times report regarding the release.) While states are not required to adopt these new standards, 26 states, including Washington State, are seriously considering adoption. Similar to the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and English Language Arts, the Next…
Dr. Lee Hood, president of ISB, published an op-ed piece today on thehill.com’s Congress blog. His piece makes the case for P4 – personalized, predictive, preventive, participatory – medicine’s potential to shift medical care from disease-focused to wellness-focused, and thereby greatly reducing the cost of healthcare. You can read the post here. LEARN MORE ABOUT ISB’S P4 MEDICINE: The Puget Sound Business Journal featured P4 medicine in a special section…
March 1, 2013 Just how vast is the reach of systems biology? Our president, Dr. Lee Hood, was invited to join the board of directors of CASIS (Center for the Advancement of Science in Space). NASA chose CASIS to be the sole manager of the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory. Lee was invited to watch the SpaceX CRS-2 Mission launch this morning at Cape Canaveral – and stay for…
ISB was founded on the belief that it takes cross-disciplinary teams of scientists in order to tackle the biggest challenges in biology. When Hadi Partovi, cofounder of Code.org, reached out to us for a comment about the importance of computer science, it was without hesitation that we shared the following quote from ISB president, Dr. Lee Hood. The video was produced by Code.org and has made the rounds this week….
ISB senior research scientist Dr. Jared Roach talks about being in love with DNA and how it’s “beautiful, curvaceous, symmetrical…fractally complex…iridescent and shimmering.” Watch the video of the Science Cafe here. Dr. Roach was named Geekwire.com’s “Geek of the Week” in August 2011.
What You Saw in the News: On Feb. 18, The New York Times published a front-page story headlined “Obama Seeking to Boost Study of Human Brain.” (Download PDF: ObamaNYTBrainMap.) While the administration has not formally announced this brain mapping project, the NYT was able to gather enough details from scientists involved in planning the project to publish a report. Participating government agencies and private foundations include the…
There have been many stories in the news about research projects in Antarctica. Most projects are related to the climate and environment, or to how organisms survive in such extreme conditions. On Feb. 6, for example, the New York Times published a report about the Wissard (Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling) project, which involves looking for a microbial community in the lake located half a mile under the…
What You Saw in the News: 2012 was the year of the microbiome. Feature stories about the trillions of microbes found in our environment and on/in human bodies appeared in publications such as The Economist, the New York Times, The Scientist, The New Yorker, Wired, Scientific American, and Discover. The NIH’s Human Microbiome Project published a report in Nature. The Earth Microbiome Project held its first international conference, which took…
What You Saw in the News: The Pacific Science Center just opened a new permanent exhibit called “Professor Wellbody’s Academy of Health & Wellness.” Here’s a description of the exhibit from the PSC web site: “Seven-thousand square feet of hands-on inventions, gadgets, activities and experiences will present health as a life-long process of balancing exercise, diet, proper rest and hygiene. These tools and resources for managing health and well-being will…
What You Saw in the News: The Oct. 9 issue of The New York Times featured a Science Times special section focused on “The Digital Doctor.” The stories ranged from how smartphone apps and electronic medical records are redefining how doctors practice medicine to how dentists can now create a custom crown for patients in less than an hour. Doctors also are engaging in “telemedicine” to reach people in remote…
