Happy Friday everyone!

Before we hit the roundup, we just want to remind everyone about our upcoming discussion on biotech education in the US. It should be a great group of people, and it’s definitely a critical topic, if we are going to maintain competitive in the world market. CLICK HERE for more info and to RSVP.

AWE-INSPIRING IMAGE OF HUMAN GENOME’S 3D STRUCTURE – Wired Science reports that researchers have produced the highest resolution picture ever of the human genome. in order to create the image, they broke the genome into millions of pieces and reverse-engineered their arrangement.

The picture is one of mind-blowing fractal glory, and the technique could help scientists investigate how the very shape of the genome, and not just its DNA content, affects human development and disease.

“It’s become clear that the spatial organization of chromosomes is critical for regulating the genome,” said study co-author Job Dekker, a molecular biologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. “This opens up new aspects of gene regulation that weren’t open to investigation before. It’s going to lead to a lot of new questions.”

iPS STEM CELL ADVANCE – The LATimes blog reported yesterday on an advance in iPS cell technology.

In order to rewind adult cells to a pluripotent state, researchers have to turn on a set of dormant genes that have the potential to cause tumors. So do the viruses they use to activate those genes.

So researchers have been looking for ways around this problem… many scientists think the safest approach is to replace the genes altogether with so-called small molecules. In a study published online today in the journal Cell Stem Cell, researchers from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute report that a single compound they dubbed RepSox can replace two of the four key reprogramming genes.

NEW ONLINE VIDEO SERIES FROM BIO – The Biotechnology Industry Organization just released a great video series called BIOBytes. The series aims to answer…

many of the basic questions of biotech – “What is it?” “How does it affect me?” and “Where is it happening? – and provide insight into the myriad ways in which biotechnology is helping heal, feed and fuel the world.

You can find the videos on BIOtech-Now.org.

INSTANT SOCIAL MEDIA FOR LIFE SCIENTISTS – Finally, friend of IAmBiotech, Mary Canady, had this great post on the San Diego Biotech Network blog about life science companies that are using social media. It includes an interesting run-down of which companies are engaging online. Definitely worth checking out.