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The National Cancer Institute at Frederick What is it? Where is it? Story on page 16. Dr. John Niederhuber Nominated as SEPTEMBER 2006 13th Director of NCI IN THIS ISSUE Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, Science Today 3 announced last August that President Bush intends to name Dr. John Our Partners 4 Niederhuber the 13th director Off-Site Programs 6 of the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Niederhuber has been Acting Platinum Publications 8 Director since June and was Technology Transfer Branch 11 also NCI’s Deputy Director for Translational and Clinical Sciences. Environment, Health, and Safety In his e-mail message to NCI Program 12 employees, Dr. Zerhouni said, “A Where Are They Now? 15 renowned surgeon and research scientist, his career before coming The Poster Puzzler 16 to the NIH included positions at the University of Wisconsin School Poster People Profi le 17 of Medicine, Stanford University, FME Machine Shop 18 Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the University Campus Improvement of Michigan. While at the Committee 19 University of Wisconsin, he directed Immediately before joining the NIH, Outreach and Special the University’s Comprehensive Dr. Niederhuber chaired the National Programs 20 Cancer Center supported by NCI. Cancer Advisory Board.” Ø Reporting In 21 2004 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Lectures Here Farmers’ Market 22 Frederick Employee Diversity Thirty years ago, not many people Recently, Dr. Hershko, a member of Team 24 realized that cancer can be caused by the the National Academy of Sciences, New Faces at NCI-Frederick 25 lack of degradation of an oncoprotein lectured here to an SRO crowd and or, on the other hand, by too rapid a simultaneous videocast to NCI- Special Events 26 degradation of a tumor suppressor Bethesda. Dr. Hershko noted in his Write When You Get Work 27 protein. Alterations in the ubiquitin talk that his interest in the ubiquitin system play a role in various cancers, system began in the 1970s as he Data Management Services 28 such as colon, breast, uterine cervical sought to understand why energy SAIC-Frederick, Inc. 29 carcinoma, sarcomas, aggressive is required for degradation. He cancers, and chromosomal instabilities. developed a biochemical analysis, Wilson Information Services Now, thanks to Dr. Avram Hershko, and his fi rst results, published in the Corporation 30 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 2004, Journal of Biological Chemistry, and his colleagues, study of the ubiquitin revealed that degradation of TAT Poster Puzzler Winner 31 system has become an important tool in (tyrosine aminotransferase) was Employment Opportunities 32 the battle against cancer. continued on page 2 2004 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Lectures Here continued from page 1 arrested by inhibitors of cellular green light of his pointer darted over infl ammation, immune response, and energy production. the screen like a glowing fi refl y as regulation of gene expression. The Nobel Prize Committee’s press he pointed out important aspects of That fi rst process—control of cell release for the 2004 Nobel Prize fi gures that summarized what has been division—interests Dr. Hershko the noted that in protein degradation, the learned and that described the new most. He began researching cell division ubiquitin molecule attaches itself to work he’s doing in this fi eld. in the 1990s, noting (again, with his gentle humor) that while most people use clams to make chowder, he fi nds them more useful in his studies of cell division because “It’s easy to make extracts from the clam.” Tongue in cheek, Dr. Hershko concluded that he’s learned two valuable lessons in his years of research: (1) Choose as your research subject something important The fi gure above, taken from Dr. Hershko’s but not yet interesting to Nobel Prize lecture in 2004, shows the others; (2) biochemistry is control of the regulation of cell division by still much needed! In all of his the Anaphase-Promoting Complex Cyclosome research, he pointed out, he ubiquitin ligase.[Source: Figure courtesy of has remained true to his calling Dr. Avram Hershko.] as a biochemist. Dr. Hershko’s pioneering work on ubiquitin, an important molecular target for Dr. Avram Hershko, winner of the many diseases, has brought Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2004 him and his colleagues numerous awards. In 2000 he a protein to be destroyed and stays He added in a humorous aside and colleagues received the prestigious with it, alerting the proteasome that that he realized “Not many people Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical a protein is headed for processing. were interested in the fi eld” when Research and in 2001 the Louisa Gross “Shortly before the protein is squeezed he started. But times have changed. Horwitz Prize, given to recognize into the proteasome, its ubiquitin Today, protein degradation (protein “exceptional accomplishments label is disconnected for re-use,” breakdown and disposal) is considered in biological and biochemical the press release explained. “When one of the most important of the cell’s research.” And, of course, the ultimate the degradation does not work cyclical functions and is involved recognition of his work came in 2004 correctly,” we become sick, the press in processes such as control of when he, Aaron Ciechanover, and release continued. Dr. Hershko’s cell division, signal transduction, Irwin Rose were jointly awarded the and his colleagues’ work will be embryonic development, apoptosis, Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Ø useful in developing drugs to battle Circadian clocks, response to many diseases. Dr. Hershko delineated the stages in Web sites of interest biochemical analysis of this complex system—the steps in making a cell- • http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2004/hershko- free extract that reproduces the cell- lecture.html cycle process in the test tube—such as • http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2004/hershko- the breakdown of protein/degradation; slides.pdf fractionation, etc., all the way to reconstituting the cell system. The • http://www.technion.ac.il/ Ø The NCI-Frederick Poster 2 September 2006 Science Today ABCC Provides Resource The revolution in biology produces the well-known, fully sequenced for Scientifi c Computing data ever-increasing in both mammalian genomes such as the complexity and volume. To help head human, mouse, dog, chimp and rat The Advanced Biomedical off potential problems resulting from and several yeast and other microbial Computing Center (ABCC) is an this growth, ABCC has large capacity genomes, some species such as the cat NCI-funded center dedicated to storage to house the data and high and elephant have been undergoing providing cyber infrastructure for bandwidth to rapidly access the data. survey sequencing. Others are being data-intensive computing to the ABCC has further helped confront constantly added to this list. Early NCI intra- and extramural scientifi c this problem by providing access to, during the initial releases of these communities. Since 1985, the Center and help with designing relational genomes, it became apparent that has been providing NCI-Frederick databases and Web access tools to there was a need for more rapid tools with networking, computer security, those databases. ABCC has both for genome annotation. This was computational infrastructure, scientifi c mySQL and Oracle databases online, further evidenced by the release of applications and databases, as well as hosted on multiple servers with a high multiple versions of each genome as scientifi c collaborations, consultation data capacity. more information and more accurate and assistance. The Center has added One example of this rapid expansion sequence assemblies were produced. or expanded many of these capabilities is in the area of high-throughput ABCC was able to speed up a tool in recent years in response to the genome sequencing. Now that whole that identifi ed short tandem repeat growing needs resulting from changes genome sequences for various species sequences within chromosomes by in high-throughput biology and new are becoming available, the demand more than 100-fold. Many of these technologies. Services and resources at for functional and comparative tools are available through Web ABCC are free. genomic analysis and annotation interfaces and the results are stored in ABCC administers a heterogeneous is escalating. These comparative databases for instant retrieval. computational infrastructure to studies are revealing insights in tailor hardware to specifi c software the investigation of human disease In upcoming issues of the Poster, we applications and databases. ABCC genes. Since these gigabytes of will profi le some of these tools. Ø provides many different scientifi c data can be too large for a desktop applications from both commercial computer to handle, and public sources as well as the ABCC provides the large databases required for their operation. storage and computational For example, ABCC maintains local resources, as well as the and up-to-date copies of many of bioinformatics expertise the sequences from NCBI for use necessary for embarking with the local installations of BLAT on these kinds of and BLAST genome searching explorations. programs. Besides providing existing bioinformatics tools and databases, Tools for Data Mining ABCC works with scientists to At ABCC, bioinformatics develop novel applications and modify researchers and analysts existing ones. continuously work on developing tools that aid Wide Array of Resources laboratory researchers In