Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

The US House of Representatives on Friday passed a 2010 budget for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education that would increase funding for the National Institutes of Health by nearly $1 billion over its appropriation for 2009. The bill, which passed the house by a vote of 264 to 153, seeks an NIH appropriation for 2010 of $30.97 billion, which is an increase of $940 million over the 2009 level, excluding funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. That increase also would boost NIH funding by $500 million over the $30.5 million asked for by President Barack Obama in his budget request. The bill also seeks $6.8 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an increase of $67 million over the 2009 appropriation and $38.4 million over the White House's 2010 request. The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which supports increased funding for biomedical research , said passage of the bill makes it more like...

In Heidelberg, Germany, today researchers from eight countries and the European Commission announced the formation of a new research enterprise, the International Human Microbiome Consortium (IHMC), which will sequence the genomes of tens of thousands of microorganisms that live in and on the human body and that influence human health. Initial funding of more than US$200 million is being provided by the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the European Commission (EC). Jane Peterson, associate director of extramural research at the NHGRI, said international collaboration is very important in advancing science, and that “the sum is more than the parts.” Participants in the IHMC have agreed in principle to the free and open release of data and resources, and the coordination of research plans, as well as to sharing innovative developments, she reported. Data from microbiome research already being conducted by the NIH Human Microbiome Project and the EC Metagenomics ...

Talking about novel receptor genes expressed in human tissues . This morning's news featured, An international team of cell biologists has created heart tissue — complete with beat — in a test tube. The tissue culture contains three distinct cell types, each of which is important in functioning hearts, and is thus a step towards the advent of lab-grown heart-tissue transplants. To day, research is considerably accelerated by the use of scientific knowledgebase and informatics tools which aid researchers significantly minimize time and effort spent on knowledge transfer across their teams and in scientific study. Thanks to such tools which supplement lab work and act as comprehensive repertoire that make optimal use of the plethora of data available in literature and centralize it as a searchable tool to investigate the characteristics of functional ligand-receptor pairs and their potential use and applications. The research team led by Gordon Keller of the McEwen Centre for Regen...