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Last week we wrote about the new WormToolbox automated imaging software, used to capture single images of the C. elegans roundworm. See the news story here.

While it’s one thing to describe the technology, we thought we’d share several images from real Broad Institute experiments using the WormToolbox program.

When you speak with Kimberly Stegmaier about her work as a pediatric oncologist at Children’s Hospital Boston, it is clear that she loves treating patients, particularly children with hematological cancers like leukemia. Kim devotes her time to caring for children through the in-patient oncology service yet she also maintains long-term clinical relationships with patients she has been treating since completing her pediatric hematology oncology residency.

Though it may not seem obvious, fungi are the sister group to animals on the tree of life. Unlike bacteria, which are an entirely different part of the tree of life, fungi are nestled in with eukaryotes close to humans and other animals. Because of that they share a lot of common biological pathways. To treat a fungal infection successfully, without eliciting undue harm to its human host, one needs to find out what makes them different from animals.

When Peter Nowell looked under his microscope at some cancer cells at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and noticed that chromosome 22 was unusually short and chromosome 9 was longer than normal, he found what would become known as the first fusion gene. Two genes, each on different chromosomes, had combined – or fused – in an abnormal way in the cancer cell. The year was 1960 and chromosomal abnormalities could then only be identified visually.