Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

A profile in statistics of journal articles : fifty years of American documentation and the Journal of the American Society for Information Science for Information Science

JASIS has consistently been identified as one the major information science and library journals both in the United States as well as for the rest of the world (Kohl & Davis, 1985; Rice 1990; Siddiqui, 1997; Wormell, 1998; Nisonger, 1999). The Journal has also long been regarded as one of the discipline's chief archival documents. And archival documents retain their influence over their disciplines far longer than do other quality publications (Griffith et al, 1979). Based on our analysis of articles published in AD and JASIS from 1950 to 1999, we find that there has been a slow but perhaps inevitable shift based first on the single non-funded researcher and author to a much wider research and publishing participation among authors, regions, corporate authors, and countries. This suggests not only cross-fertilization of ideas, but also more complex research questions. A small trend toward greater external funding further reinforces this finding. We also chose to close our data collection with the last number of volume 50. This is less by design than by serendipity, since the data collection and initial analyses were conceived as a class project for the Elements of Research course of the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Oklahoma for fall semester 1999Peer reviewe

Regulatory T Cells and Immune Tolerance to Coagulation Factor IX in the Context of Intramuscular AAV1 Gene Transfer

Regulatory T cells play a major role in induction and maintenance of immune tolerance and immunological homeostasis. A variety of strategies have been attempted to induce regulatory T cells for control of unwanted, adverse immunity in autoimmune diseases, transplantation as well as gene transfer. We recently reported efficient induction of immune tolerance to coagulation factor IX (FIX) following intramuscular AAV1 gene transfer. In the current study, we performed a systematic and comprehensive examination of the role and function of regulatory T cells in induction and maintenance of FIX tolerance in the context of intramuscular AAV1 gene transfer. We observed no significant upregulation of regulatory T cells in the FIX-tolerant mice. In addition, adoptive transfer of splenocytes from FIX-tolerant mice did not suppress anti-hFIX immunity in recipient mice. Both in vitro and in vivo depletion of regulatory T cells failed to reverse FIX tolerance. These observations revealed that regulatory T cells do not play a significant role in the maintenance/protection of the established FIX tolerance. Our results provide critical insight into the role and function of regulatory T cells in induction and maintenance/protection of immune tolerance in gene transfer, complementing the current paradigm of immune tolerance mechanism