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The Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research is part of an international research consortium that today launched a $100 million public-private effort to build the next generation map of the human genome. Called a "haplotype map," this effort is expected to make it easier, faster, and perhaps cheaper to find genes that predispose us to common diseases such as diabetes and cancer.

Imagine popping a movie into the VCR or DVD player and watching a list of credits for two hours—no movie, no plot, no dialogue—just the cast. That’s the problem facing contemporary biology. The human genome project has provided researchers with a growing list of genes—basically a cast of thousands of characters, running life inside the cell. But the key to understanding life, both in health and sickness, is the script that outlines how these cellular players interact, communicate, and cue each other.

Prion diseases—such as mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans—have stumped scientists for decades with a complex "whodunit" complete with many suspects and a missing murder weapon. Unlike other infectious diseases that are linked to pathogens such as bacteria and viruses, these diseases have a unique and mysterious connection to a misfolded protein.

Some people carry better genetic armor for resisting infectious disease than others. For example, many Africans have allelic variants of several different genes that provide some resistance to malaria. Geneticists would like to know whether such resistance arose through selective pressure or merely represents random mutations that remain in the population.

The Whitehead Institute recently welcomed David Sabatini as its newest faculty member. Sabatini, who joined the Institute in 1997 as a Whitehead Fellow, was named an Associate Member at Whitehead and an Assistant Professor in the biology department at MIT.

The Genome Center got in touch with its spiritual side last week when it brought together Whitehead’s Tibetian employees—the largest Tibetan workforce in Cambridge—for afternoon tea. Almost fifty members of the Whitehead Tibetan community joined Genome Center Director Eric Lander to discuss his upcoming visit with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

New results from Rudolf Jaenisch’s lab at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research confirmed that the cloning process jeopardizes the integrity of an animal’s whole genome. Scientists had suspected this based on studying a mere dozen genes, but the current study, which will be reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science this week, expansively surveyed 10,000 genes for abnormalities.

When Anton Van Leeuwenhoek first transformed a small glass ball into a magnifying lens, he opened a new window into the world of scientific discovery. Four centuries and millions of magnifications later, researchers are able to see the inner workings of the cell and use their observations to unravel many mysteries of life.

Whitehead Member Gerald Fink got a rousing "thank you" today from his colleagues in the field of yeast biology. The heartfelt recognition came in the form of the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award given at the biennial Yeast Genetics and Molecular Biology Meeting in Madison, Wisconsin. The breadth and depth of his achievements made the decision to select Fink as the first recipient of the award "a slam dunk" choice, said Tom Fox of Cornell University and a former student of Fink's, who presented the award.

Whitehead Member Harvey F. Lodish was elected President of the 10,000-member American Society for Cell Biology for the year 2004. Since its founding in 1960, the American Society for Cell Biology has brought together experts in the varied facets of cell biology to advance scientific knowledge, increase public awareness of the importance of biomedical research, and guide national policy on the education, training, and career development of biomedical researchers.