BE-healthwellbeing
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NIH award supports research on nanopore DNA sequencer
William Dunbar, an assistant professor of computer engineering at UC Santa Cruz, has received a career development award from the National Institutes of Health. The Mentored Quantitative Research Career Development Award is designed to encourage researchers with backgrounds in quantitative science and engineering to focus on questions relating to health and disease. William Dunbar Dunbar,…
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UCSC researchers receive $1.6 million grant for biosensor project
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have received major funding from the National Institutes of Health to develop new sensor technology for biomedical applications. The project builds on earlier advances by UCSC researchers in optical and electrical sensing technologies and involves a broad interdisciplinary group of collaborators at UCSC and Brigham Young University.…
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UC Santa Cruz researchers awarded grant to develop faster, cheaper DNA sequencing
A team including researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has received a major grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to develop new technology for genome sequencing. The grant is part of a NHGRI program to develop “revolutionary genome sequencing technologies” that will enable a human-sized genome to be sequenced for…
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Genome centers combine forces to validate a gene set for biomedical research
The advent of online databases to access the human genome has been a boon to biomedical research, and the usefulness of this information has just moved to a new level. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), and the Wellcome Trust…
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An unusual RNA structure in the SARS virus offers a promising target for antiviral drugs
Research on the genome of the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) has revealed an unusual molecular structure that looks like a promising target for antiviral drugs. A team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has determined the three-dimensional shape of this structure, an intricately twisted and folded segment of…
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UCSC engineers develop assistive technologies for the blind
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are developing new assistive technologies for the blind based on advances in computer vision that have emerged from research in robotics. A “virtual white cane” is one of several prototype tools for the visually impaired developed by Roberto Manduchi, an assistant professor of computer engineering, and his…
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Genome researchers publish analysis of finished human genome sequence, plan next steps to figure out what it all means
A pair of papers published this week in the two leading scientific journals mark the completion of the Human Genome Project and the start of a new project to find all of the functional elements in human DNA. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are involved in both projects. In the October 21…
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UCSC researchers join in new partnership to speed development of an ‘artificial retina’ to restore sight
CHICAGO, IL–In an effort to speed the design and development of an artificial retina that could potentially help millions of people blinded by retinal diseases, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced today that five Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories, a private company, and three universities–including UC Santa Cruz–have signed agreements to form a research…
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UC Santa Cruz partners with USC and Caltech in national center to develop implantable electronics for reversing major disabilities
Implantable microelectronic devices for overcoming blindness, paralysis, and stroke damage are the focus of a new center in which engineers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, are collaborating with scientists at the University of Southern California and the California Insitute of Technology. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is providing $17 million over five years…
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Bioinformatics experts gain ground in protein sequence analysis
Proteins, with their extraordinary diversity of structure and function, pose some of the toughest problems in the field of bioinformatics, giving rise to a growing arsenal of computational tools for protein analysis. An array of computer-based strategies is now available to help molecular biologists who have found an unknown protein, determined its sequence of amino…
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UC Santa Cruz Genome Browser provides a portal for scientific exploration of finished human genome sequence
As leaders of the Human Genome Project announced the project’s successful completion at a press conference today in Bethesda, MD, bioinformatics researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, made the completed reference sequence of the human genome publicly available on the web-based UCSC Genome Browser (http://genome.ucsc.edu). This was also the first site to make…
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Mouse genome sequence published with first comparative analysis of mouse and human genomes
Researchers in the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering (CBSE) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, made significant contributions to the analysis of the mouse genome sequence announced this week by the international Mouse Genome Sequencing Consortium. The consortium published a high-quality draft sequence of the mouse genome–the genetic blueprint of a mouse–together with…