Pitt faculty receive awards to explore next-generation te...(to become functional neurons. This techn...)

Date:5/27/2008

to become functional neurons. This technology would allow scientists to answer the predominant questions regarding neural stem cell growth and neural tissue regeneration, namely, if stem cells can become functional cells on an engineered surface and, if so, under what circumstances.

Di Gao could help usher in the much-heralded future of personalized medical care based on an individuals DNA in his effort to revamp the technique for screening and separating DNA molecules. Gaos approach would stretch DNA strands tethered to a solid surface via an electric field, allowing them to be pulled from the surface and analyzed based on their viscoelasticity. This method would overcome the limitations of the predominant method of electrophoresessubmerging the strands in a matrix and applying an electric field. By stretching the DNA, chromosome-sized DNA molecules can be separated and studied, large fragments can be screened for mutations, and longer sequence fragments can be extracted. The technique might also be applied to RNA. The education component of Gaos project includes outreach to minority high school students through a related course and workshop at Baldwin and Westinghouse high schools in Pittsburgh, both of which have large African American student populations, and collaboration with Tsinghua University in China on an international field study module for Pitt undergraduates that focuses on international views of the ethical and social issues of genetic research.

Rebecca Hwa aims to improve the ability of computers to process and translate human language. She will address the difficulty many systems have in processing texts from such specialized domains as business emails or scientific literature as well as texts that are automatically translated from foreign languages. Specifically, Hwa will create machine-learning algorithms that find correspondences between standard English and texts from specialized domains. The project focuses on three types of
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Contact: Morgan Kelly mekelly@pitt.edu 412-624-4356 University of Pittsburgh Source:Eurekalert

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