The Sanger Institute is named after Fred Sanger, the 91-year-old British scientist who is the fourth, and only living person, to have won two Nobel prizes: one for his involvement in sequencing proteins, the other for his work on the sequencing of genes. The institute, originally called the Sanger Center, was opened in the village of Hinxton, near Cambridge, in October 1993.
During the early years, the institute worked on sequencing relatively simple life forms such as the nematode worm and various types of yeast. Later, its operations were ramped up after it received considerable backing from the Wellcome Trust. As a result, it was able play a major part in the sequencing of the human genome project.
The project was carried out by laboratories across the world with the main work being shared between the US National Institutes of Health and the Sanger Institute. After years of effort, the first draft of the genome, which mapped out the 3 billion base pairs from which our genes are constructed, was published on June 26, 2000. “This is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind,” US President Bill Clinton announced.
DNA was first isolated by Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher who, in 1869, discovered a microscopic substance in the pus of discarded surgical bandages. But deoxyribonucleic acid’s key role in biological inheritance was not fully appreciated until Francis Crick and James Watson demonstrated, in 1953, that it possessed a double-helical structure. During cell division this helix divides into its separate strands, which then migrate to the two new cells. These each grows a second, complimentary strand to form a new double helix, which takes control of that cell’s functioning..
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located