Physicists at Brown University have developed a novel procedure to map a person’s genome. They report in the journal Nanotechnology the first experiment to move a DNA chain through a nanopore using magnets. The approach is promising because it allows multiple segments of a DNA strand to be read simultaneously and accurately.

It took a global corps of scientists approximately $500 million and 13 years to identify the more than 35,000 genes of the human genome. Five years later, Boston College Biologist Gabor Marth and his research team have developed software that can analyze half a million DNA sequences in 10 minutes.

Surrounding the small islands of genes within the human genome is a vast sea of mysterious DNA. While most of this non-coding DNA is junk, some of it is used to help genes turn on and off.

The full weight of a consortium of world-leading scientists – including those who helped decode the entire human genome – is being thrown at a parasitic worm less than 1mm long.

Using supercomputers to compare portions of the human genome with those of other mammals, researchers at Cornell have discovered some 300 previously unidentified human genes, and found extensions of several hundred genes already known.

Ten years ago, scientist and physician Dr. Francis Collins led a team of researchers on a successful, pioneering mission to map the human genome. As an author, he has shared his strong belief in the compatibility of modern science and faith in God.

The first individual genome ever sequenced has revealed genetic variation among humans far richer than previously imagined. The 2.8 billion contiguous bits of genetic code - a complete DNA blueprint of celebrity scientist Craig Venter - have been published in the online open-access journal PLoS Biology.

A Cornell study of genome sequences in African-Americans, European-Americans and Chinese suggests that natural selection has caused as much as 10 percent of the human genome to change in some populations in the last 15,000 to 100,000 years, when people began migrating from Africa.

Many of the areas of the human genome previously thought to be deserts are in fact teeming with life, a scientist will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics today (Tuesday 19 June).

Mathematicians have mapped the inner workings of one of the most complicated structures ever studied: the object known as the exceptional Lie group E8. This achievement is significant both as an advance in basic knowledge and because of the many connections between E8 and other areas, including string theory and geometry.