Photo of the Day, November 6, 2009: Newburyport Night 1
Heroic MBTA Operator and Inspector Honored: Saved Woman's Life
Week Around the Ists, November 1–7
Sunday Happenings
Book It: Book Events November 8–14
After a two-week hiatus learning the finer points of the Neutron Dance, Beaker Hill makes its triumphant return! (Really, we’ve been working on two wonderful in-depth presentations for you, dear reader, that will be displayed with the best Bostonist shine over the next couple weeks.) But in the meantime, we’ve come across a ton of other interesting stories and felt compelled to cherry-pick a couple of our favorites as a small appetizer. So enjoy!
“TMI!” screamed a chorus of Valley Girls outside Harvard Medical School last month as the Personal Genome Project released
the medical records and a significant portion of the genomes of their first 10 volunteers on the Web. The volunteers—all prominent in the biotech community—will eventually be joined by 100,000 others as part of the PGP’s effort to both bring down the cost and time required to sequence anyone’s genetic information, and to allow researchers to compare genomes to aid in the treatment of inherited diseases. It is thought that in the future, we will all store copies of our genomes with our physicians so that we can have access to the most effective treatments for our specific genetic profiles. (Though, to be fair, it all does sound a bit Gattaca-esque.)
And not to disappoint the same set of Valley Girls, a drug from Cambridge-based Sirtris Pharmaceuticals may eventually give us the ability to eat whatever we want and stay healthy. (OMG!) A study by EPFL in Switzerland shows that the drug in question, SRT1720, activates the same gene as the “life-extending” chemical in red wine, resveratrol, but does so at a much higher rate. In tests on mice fed a high-calorie diet mixed with SRT1720, the mice appeared to have the attributes of a healthy low-calorie diet, including increased endurance, protection from obesity and diabetes, and even a lowered cholesterol level. The Swiss study is published in this month’s edition of Cell Metabolism (right next to Cosmo in the magazine rack, ladies.)
That’s it for this week—keep an eye out for our super-amazing doubly-awesome special editions (the name’s still a work in progress) to be posted right here later on this month.
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