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Today, the cancer samples we have been following will go from tangible pieces of tissue to something a bit more abstract: invisible strands of pure DNA. In the process, the samples will be whirled and spun through laboratory machinery, incubated over night, and washed repeatedly with different chemical substances. The final product of all of this will be large droplets of clear liquid at the bottom of tiny, plastic Eppendorf tubes.

The liver is a critical and intriguing organ, and our understanding of it continues to evolve to this day. As reported in a paper published earlier this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Broad and MIT researchers teamed up to put artificial liver tissue to the test (read the news story here and Project Spotlight here).

Last week on the Broad website, we told you about a new approach to detect and verify biomarkers, using the search for signals of heart attack as a test case. In this study, the team of scientists from the Broad Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital looked for proteins in the blood that are released when heart cells are injured and that can be detected quickly after the attack.

More than a hundred years ago, Austrian monk Gregor Mendel observed something astounding in flowering pea plants: a first glimpse of genetics. Today, Mendel’s observations about how physical traits pass from one generation to the next continue to inspire amazing discoveries.