Nano-Biosensor Technology & Human Genome Bioinformatics

A nanoscale technology has been developed for investigating biomolecular processes in single cells. The new technology enables researches to monitor and study cellular signaling networks, including the first observation of programmed cell death or apoptosis in a single live cell. The "nanobiosensor" allows scientists to physically probe inside a living cell without destroying it, which clearly will have many applications. Researchers have a new tool for understanding how toxic agents are transported into cells and how biological pathogens trigger biological responses in the cell. The success of the Human Genome Program has generated many tools for analyzing the available DNA sequence data. These tools are available to researchers and the public in the general field of Bioinformatics.

The group will be given a short overview by Jay Snoddy of the history of the genome project, some of the data that come from it and how to access that data. Bing Zhang will present an overview of some tools for manipulating sequences, genes, and gene products. Loren Hauser will give an overview of tools for manipulating genomes, genes and metabolism. Oakley Crawford and Andrey Gorin will demonstrate some protein viewers and the program BLAST used by companies such as Genentech. A tour of the nanoscience technology laboratory will be done with some hands on work using a nanoprobe. The group will then interact with Jennifer Bownas of the Human Genome Information Management Group, who is preparing high-school modules for biology genome/protein/proteome education. They will then work with the facilitator, Brian Hingerty, using computer graphics to visualize DNA and protein structures in a form suitable for high school students. Lastly, the facilitator will demonstrate some three dimensional molecular structures of DNA modified by toxic mutagens using freely available software. On the last day the teachers will prepare their report for presentation on Fri July 23.