New Masters program at KTH

I would like to draw your attention to a new Master program in
Computational and Systems Biology starting in the fall of 2008 at
The School of Computer Science and Communication of KTH Royal
Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden).

The Master Program is of two years, in the Bologna format of
European Higher education. A web page with more information is at
http://www.csc.kth.se/utbildning/program/compsysbio/home

Tuition in Swedish higher education is free, for anyone,
from any country.

Stockholm/Uppsala is a major center of the biotech/pharma
industries in Europe, and one of the major hubs in biomedical
research, worldwide.

KTH has strong traditions in Biotechnology, Theoretical Computer
Science (Algorithmic complexity theory) and many other fields,
and pursues a vigorous program in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

For any questions or queries, please feel free to get in
touch with me, or with any faculty member as listed on the
the program web page.

Ultraconserved elements investigated

One of the surprises when the numerous whole genomes started to come out, was that they contain short regions that are extremely conserved. They were named ultra-conserved elements and were defined to be at least 200 bp and almost perfectly conserved. These elements were found in species as far apart as human and mouse. Usually, such conservation hints about important function. Notice that this conservation is much stronger than what we usually see in genes, and therefor it was expected that we would find a new exciting mechanism using these regions.

However, a recent publication (Ahituv et al, PLoS Biology) details how knockouts of these regions in mouse gave no hints about functionality. In fact, the mice were as viable as any other mouse. This does not rule out that the regions are important and functional, but the extreme conservation does no longer imply extreme importance.