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Research Briefs

	Fruit fly genome sequence completed
	Flu season 2003
	Bulls or bears? It's determined in the brain

Fruit fly genome sequence completed

The Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston has announced the finished sequence assembly of the DNA sequence of the fruit fly genome, Drosophila melanogaster.

Over the past three years, scientists at Baylor have collaborated with researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., to finish a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clone-based assembly to complete gaps in the previously announced draft sequence.

Baylor was responsible for BAC clone finishing along BAC chromosome 3L, and approximately half of the X chromosome. This equals more than one-third of the total genome.

Their work, reported in a recent issue of the journal Genome Biology, shows that the Whole Genome Shotgun (WGS) sequencing strategy can efficiently produce a high quality sequence of a genome while generating the reagents required for sequence finishing.

"This marks the successful completion of an important project with a long and interesting history," said Richard Gibbs, Ph.D., director of the Baylor center.

Baylor researchers and their collaborators used "direct sequencing" methods to target sequencing efforts to the gap regions. The process took one year to finish. During this time, the group closed more than 1,000 gaps in their region of the genome. This process extended the length of the chromosomes by about 5 percent and helped correct the sequence of hundreds of the estimated 15,000 fruit fly genes.

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Flu season 2003

A new variant of the influenza B virus, B/Hong Kong/2001, showed up last spring and will likely spread again this winter, said W. Paul Glezen, MD, a professor in the department of molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine.

Fortunately, Glezen said, it is included in this year's vaccine. This year marks the first time parents are being urged to get babies and toddlers vaccinated because influenza sends its tiniest patients to the hospital as often as it does the elderly. But parents need to be aware that unlike the one yearly shot most people need, the first-ever inoculation for young children requires two doses a month apart. Parents shouldn't delay that visit to their pediatrician.

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Bulls or bears? It's determined in the brain

Wall Street analysts scour earnings reports and graphs to predict the roller-coaster nature of the stock market.

A new field of research, called neural economics, suggests that studying the brain scans of people who play the stock market may provide just as much insight. A process called valuation, detailed in a recent issue of the neuroscience journal Neuron, helps explain buying and selling behavior on the stock market.

"Valuation is an ongoing function of every nervous system and allows humans to prioritize one relative behavior over another," said Read Montague, PhD, a professor in the department of neuroscience and director of the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience and the Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "Some of the neural systems involved in valuation are also hijacked by drugs of abuse and certain forms of mental illness."

To survive, humans and other complex organisms developed a system to make rapid decisions, For example, they had to decide whether to run from a predator or to continue eating last night's kill. The brain converts the vast amount of information it receives from the environment into a common currency.

For each decision, the brain must weigh the predictability of future reward or punishment, much like a person tries to predict whether a stock will go up or down.

Montague and his research team have developed a mathematical equation based on this concept and are putting it to the test with a series of experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging machines. FMRI records changes in blood flow and allows researchers to see which part of the brain is active when exposed to stimuli.

Research participants are hooked up to FMRI machines while undergoing decision-making experiments, for example, playing a computer game with others online. The experiments test the human response to reward.

The results show that the orbitofrontal cortex and striatum areas of the brain are most involved with valuation, and uncover a connection between the way the brain values events in the world and a common method for pricing stock options called the Black-Scholes.

"I strongly suspect that these new findings provide real biological insight into why the Black-Scholes approach has any efficacy in a real market," said Montague. "Although the language sounds very economic, these findings have profound implications for a new view of the impaired social interactions associated with drug use and mental illness."

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