6A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2004
Play for me a simple melody
John Marshall Mental/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wynton Marsalis plays trumpet during Jazz at Lincoln Center's inaugural gala in New York yesterday. He and musicians from around the world kicked off the opening of the new home of Jazz at Lincoln Center. "I just had to be here for this," said Igor Butman, a jazz saxophonist and bandleader from Moscow. "This is the first real jazz center in the world."
Study: Human gene count lower
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — In a blow to human vanity, researchers now say that people have about the same number of genes as a small flowering plant or a tiny worm. The new estimate is down sharply from just three years ago.
"We (humans) don't look very impressive in the competition," said Dr. Francis Collins, coauthor of the new analysis by the international group that decoded the human genome.
The new estimate is 20,000 to 25,000 genes, a drop from the 30,000 to 40,000 the same group of scientists published in 2001.
By comparison, C. elegans, a worm that is a favorite research subject, has around 19,500 genes. Another lab favorite, a plant in the mustard family called Arabidopsis, has about 27,000.
But the complexity of the human body arises from more than just its genetic parts list, experts said.
"It's not just the number of genes that matters," said another co-author, Eric Lander of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass. "It really is how nature uses these genes."
Scientists have long speculated about how many genes people have. Some have put it at
100,000 or more, and the genome project's initial figure fell in the low end of estimates when it was announced.
In a betting pool among scientists that ran from 2000 to 2003, the average guess before the consortium published its 2001 estimate was about 66,000 genes. Afterward, the average dropped to about 44,000.
Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, put his money on about 48,000 genes when the contest began. That's about twice the new estimate.
The new estimate deals only with genes that tell cells how to make proteins. It is reported in
today's issue of the journal Nature by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, which had determined the sequence of nearly all of the 3 billion-plus chemical building blocks that make up the human DNA code. Certain sequences of these building blocks make up genes, just like certain sequences of letters create words.
When the consortium produced its 2001 gene count estimate, it still had many gaps in the DNA sequence it had determined. Now the scientists have closed those gaps as much as they can with current technology.
HIV: Research helping fight virus; vaccine still years awav
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The virus that is passed to the new person has already come in contact with medication, meaning the virus will already be immune to it.
"HIV has not gone away," Ikerd said. "It's treatable, but some treatments don't even work. It's a lot less hopeful than we like to think it is."
Ikerd knows that research is happening, but still views HIV and AIDS as a big problem.
"Realistically we will not have a vaccine in our lifetime," Ikerd said.
At the University of Kansas Medical Center, Bill Narayan,
principal investigator and researcher, has been working on an HIV vaccine that proved effective in monkeys last year. Narayan wants to find a vaccine that can be administered to stop reproduction of HIV in humans, according to a press release from the Med Center. The vaccine has not been approved to be tested on patients. Narayan was unavailable for comment.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment estimated that there are between 900 and 1,400 people living in Kansas who do not know they are infected with HIV.
Edited by Jon Ralston
Artist rendering of Wescoe Hall
ARTS: Proposal in four phases
The fourth stage will involve the final decision to continue the proposal or drop it.
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In order for the increase to be
In the first stage, Wilcox asked department chairs if the college would consider per credit hour tuition.
The third stage involves educating the University community about the proposal.
The second stage was discussion among student tuition advisers, student senators and the dean's executive student council of what should be done with the money coming from the added tuition, and decided on construction and renovation.
implemented, the proposal must be approved by Provest David Shulenburger and Chancellor Robert Hemenway. If both approve, then the proposal will be sent to the Kansas Board of Regents for review and approval or denial in June 2005.
Though still undecided on where he stands on the proposal, Jones said he recognized that the University, its buildings and the overall KU feeling will benefit from it.
"I see that, 10 years from now, the University will look, feel and function better than it does now, and I am willing to pay $900 a semester for that," Jones said.
Edited by Jon Ralston
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