Today in Nature our recent research studying basal-like breast cancer as compared to normal DNA, a subsequent brain metastasis, and a xenograft derived from the primary tumor (a xenograft is the implantation of a portion of the tumor biopsy into the fatty tissue of an immunodeficient mouse) was published along with an commentary by Joe Gray. Surprisingly, while the xenograft was derived from the primary tumor, its mutational profile had many characteristics similar to that of the brain metastasis. This finding indicates that mutations required for successful transplantation of a tumor into a mouse are perhaps similar to those required for the formation of metastasis (and provide insights into why some tumor types are not prone to metastasis and fail to grow xenografts). The article also represents the first publication of the complete sequence of an African-American female.

You can find news coverage of the article and its findings at KWMU, BusinessWeek, News24, GenomeWeb, and the WU Record (includes video).

The zebra finch reference genome and several companion papers are being published today in Nature and Genome Research. The zebra finch is a model for human vocal development and it is hoped that a better understanding of its genome and the genes involved in learning song can shed light on how humans learn language. These learnings may be helpful to researchers studying diseases that slow language development such as autism. Wes Warren of The Genome Center led the consortium to sequence the reference genome. Coverage of the publications can be found at the BBC, ABC, CBS, NPR/KWMU, The Independent, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, GenomeWeb, and WU Record (includes a video).

Today, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis announced a joint Pediatric Cancer Genome Project. This project aims to sequence tumor and normal genomes from over 600 pediatric cancer patients over three years. There is a press conference today (right now) at the National Press Club in Washington, DC (click on the 10 a.m. item in the DayBook on the left-hand side of the page). St. Jude’s will be supplying the tissue samples and The Genome Center will be doing all of the whole-genome sequencing on the samples. Genomic analysis will be done jointly between WU and St. Jude’s. It’s an ambitious project and personally I am very excited to be a part of it. You can find more coverage of the project in the press at the WU NewsRoom, GenomeWeb, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, USA Today, Memphis’ The Commercial Appeal, KWMU (local NPR station), CBC, and the St. Louis Business Journal. You can find video interviews with some of the principles on the project’s multimedia web site.

Update: I have added links to press coverage as it has become available (and will continue to do so).

There are two great health-care crises in America—one involving coverage and the other cost. The Obama plan appears likely to tackle the first but not the second. This is bad economics but also bad politics: the crisis of cost affects 85 percent of Americans, while the crisis of coverage affects about 15 percent. Obama’s message to the country appears to be “We have a dysfunctional health-care system with out-of-control costs, and let’s add 45 million people to it.”

With the recent passage of the Senate’s bill, one that expands coverage but does nothing to control costs, his statement is even more true. So why is the cost of health care not getting adequately addressed? Because there are large corporations that are making huge sums of money from the system as it currently exists and they are willing to spend a small fraction of their earnings to “convince” lawmakers that their continued profiteering is good for those lawmakers, er, America.

The Senate passed its health care bill last week, and as you may have noticed, the final version looks quite different from the original legislation introduced last summer.

What’s happened in the meantime is a case study in what’s wrong with Congress — and a map of the work that lies ahead of us as we enter into a new year.

Take a look at one popular bogeyman of the day, Joe Lieberman. The people of his state strongly supported the public option, 68 percent to 21 percent in a recent poll. But Senator Lieberman almost single-handedly killed the public option, threatening to filibuster any legislation that included it. So why’d he do it?

Maybe Joe was acting on principle, and perhaps he believes every word that’s come out of his mouth in the past month. We don’t know. What we do know is that special interests in the insurance, health care, and pharmaceutical industries have given Joe Lieberman millions in campaign contributions.

It’s easy to pick on Joe Lieberman, but he’s far from the only member of Congress whose motives we can’t know. The point isn’t that these 535 people are evil. It’s that a vast and confusing network of influences stands between the public and our elected representatives, undermining trust in Congress and giving us no choice, finally, but to assume the worst whenever a member doesn’t vote the way we might have liked.

Fixing the problem doesn’t mean voting out the feckless Democrats or the obstructionist Republicans. It doesn’t even mean voting out Senator Lieberman. As long as our legislative process is held in thrall to an economy of influence that nearly requires members to play nice with the special interests, the will of the people — on the left and on the right — will continue to be stymied on every issue, in every Congress, under every administration.

The good news — yes, there is good news — is that, thanks to the health care mess, the public has never been more engaged on the issue of electoral reform than it is today. People who hated the bill and people who loved it have watched with growing disgust as the process seemed to be derailed, and the legislation itself torn apart by the highest bidders.

And what these people want to know is: How can we build a system in which the American people are the highest bidder?

I’m grateful you’ve decided to join our campaign to achieve real reform and finally take the money out of our political system. In the new year, we’ll be expanding these efforts — and your continued participation will be critical to our success. To get started, forward this email to your family and friends and tell them to visit http://change-congress.org to learn more.

The challenges have never felt more urgent, and never more daunting. But the will to win this fight has never run so deep, or so wide. 2010 is going to be a very good year for our movement.

Thank you, and a happy and healthy New Year to you and yours.

– Lawrence Lessig

Chalk another one up for the corn lobby (damn those Iowa caucuses!), the maize genome has been published. More seriously, this maize genome reference sequence, much like the human genome reference sequence, provides a foundation for truly revolutionary research into the relationship between genotypes and specific traits and, since genetic engineering is slightly more acceptable in corn than humans, developing strains of corn that can thrive in, for example, warmer, drier climates. The Genome Center led the sequencing effort and collaborated with several institutions on the analysis, resulting in 13 companion papers published in Science and PLoS Genetics. The sequencing was quite a challenge because of the highly repetitive nature of corn’s tetraploid (there are four copies of each chromosome as compared to the diploid (two copies) human genome) genome. There is a lot of coverage in the popular press, including Scientific American, Popular Science, and, of course, Farm and Dairy.

Why are Sens. Lieberman and Bayh threatening to filibuster health care bills if they contain a “public option”? Well, both Senators and their wives receive large sums of money from the private health insurance industry. Millions of dollars. Is this why? Does it matter? Just the fact that this question is relevant indicates something is severely wrong with our system of campaign finance and lobbying. You can learn more about their relationships with the private health care industry and make a difference at Change-Congress.org.