Four research teams based in Boston are among eight groups that have garnered $19 million in grants from a foundation focused on discovering new treatments for recurrent prostate cancer.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation, a philanthropy based in Santa Monica, Calif., announced its 2008 Challenge Awards, which will be distributed to each program in three annual payments of $500,000 to $1 million.

A map created by Harvard biologist Marc Vidal and Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, now a physicist at Northeastern University, plots diseases by the genes they have in common — something like the charts linking actors to one another (and ultimately to Kevin Bacon) based on the movies they appeared in together, as a story in today's New York Times describes it. They called it the "diseasome" in a paper they published last year.

Its concepts are changing the field of disease classification, the story says, including different kinds of cancer.

“In the not too distant future, we will think about these diseases based on the molecular pathways that are aberrant, rather than the anatomical origin of the tumor,” Dr. Todd Golub, director of the cancer program at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, told the Times.

From one to 10 to 1,000: Genetic scientists today unveiled an ambitious project to sequence the genomes of at least 1,000 people from across the globe.

Dr. David Altshuler of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute in Cambridge will co-chair the international consortium running the project, the National Institutes of Health announced.

The project underscores how quickly genome-sequencing technology is advancing. In 2006, it was big news when even one person’s genome was sequenced. Last year, Harvard’s George Church won headlines with his plan to sequence – and publish – the genomes of 10 people. That data is expected to come out soon.

Now, the thousand-genome project aims to turn up medically useful genetic information by providing the most detailed and comprehensive look yet at the genetic variations among humans.

At its peak, it is expected to generate data equivalent to sequencing two human genomes per day. Its projected costs: between $30 and $50 million.

A Cambridge research institution is part of a new initiative to explore the collective genomes of the assorted bacteria, fungi and other microbes that live in or on our bodies.

The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard is one of four centers chosen for an early phase of the Human Microbiome Project, the National Institutes of Health’s five-year, $115 million effort to understand how microorganisms affect human health and disease. The Broad, along with the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and the J. Craig Venter Institute, in Rockville, Md., will build a framework and data resources for sequencing microbe genomes. The initial one-year project is funded at $8.2 million.

Researchers from Harvard and MIT, working with South African scientists, have decoded the first genome sequence of an extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis strain and have taken the unusual step of immediately posting the data online instead of first submitting them to a journal for publication, they said today.

The team from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal are making available the genome sequence of a tuberculosis strain that has been linked to a particularly severe tuberculosis outbreak among patients with HIV in one South African town.

A Boston group is sharing genetic information from families affected by autism with other researchers to promote understanding of the developmental disorder.

The Autism Consortium, whose members include hospitals, medical schools and universities in the Boston area, will transfer profiles of 500,000 genetic variations found across the genomes of 700 families with two or more children who have autism. The data will be held by the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange, a program of the advocacy organization Autism Speaks. Scientists can apply to the exchange, which gathered DNA from the families. The samples have been scanned for sequences where there are deletions or extra copies of DNA segments. The consortium is sharing the genetic variations it found.

"We returned all of the raw data to AGRE so they can distribute it to any other investigtors who want to begin exploring what may be the genetic underpinnings of autism," Mark Daly, a consortium member from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, said in an interview. "Understanding the genetics underlying a complex disease is not an easy problem to solve. So there's no excuse for hoarding your data when much more can be learned by sharing."

Two local researchers have received government grants to explore the organization and function of the human genome, part of an expansion of a project that already has shown the genome to be far more complex than previously thought.

Dr. Bradley Bernstein of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Zhiping Weng of Boston University are among principal investigators in the ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements, or ENCODE, a project funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute. The insititute announced more than $80 million in grants today.

Bernstein has won $4.8 million over four years to study proteins important in DNA packaging in human cells. Weng will receive $1.5 million over three years to identify binding sites in regions of DNA that guide how genes are transcribed.

Researchers from Boston and Cambridge have won two of three prizes for young cancer investigators.

Angelika Amon (left) of MIT and Dr. Todd R. Golub of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT will receive the 2007 Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The prize recognizes contributions to understanding the treatment of cancer made by scientists under the age of 45.

Amon studies how chromosomes segregate during cell division and Golub uses genomic approaches to classify subtypes of cancer. They will share a $150,000 prize with the third winner, Gregory J. Hannon of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, who studies the biology and biochemistry of RNA interference. All three winners are also Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators.

A single variant of a gene is linked to an increased risk for both rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus, providing support for the idea that common risk genes and disease pathways are involved in many autoimmune disorders, authors including researchers at the Broad Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Biogen Idec report.

Giving critically ill patients recombinant human erythropoetin did not reduce the need for red-blood-cell transfusions, but it may reduce deaths in trauma patients, according to an article by researchers including doctors from the Boston University School of Medicine and University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Seven Massachusetts researchers have won grants from a new government program to study how genes and the environment interact, the National Institutes of Health announced today.

Through the Genes, Environment and Health Initiative, researchers will study the genetics of such diseases as diabetes, cancer, heart disease and tooth decay. To learn about the environmental component, scientists will develop ways to monitor personal exposure, whether to toxins or to physical activity.

The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, led by Stacey Gabriel, will receive $3.8 million to become one of two genotyping centers for the initiative. The other is at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff

Scientists using powerful new genetics research methods have for the first time identified a snippet of DNA common to many people that dramatically increases the chances of developing heart disease.

The discovery, revealed in two large and independent studies in North America and Europe, indicates that 75 percent of Caucasians possess a previously unknown genetic defect that puts them at elevated risk of a heart attack regardless of bad habits -- smoking, for example -- or bad health, such as hypertension or high cholesterol levels. The increased risk is most substantial for the 25 percent of Caucasians who have two copies of this defective DNA, one on each set of chromosomes.

"This is one of the most significant genetic risk factors found to date for heart attack," said Dr. Kari Stefansson, chief executive of DeCode Genetics, an Iceland-based company famous for its gene-hunting prowess.

"The variant may account for one-fifth of heart attacks" among white Europeans and North Americans, he said in a telephone interview.

By Alice Dembner, Globe Staff

Four separate scientific teams, including one led by Harvard researchers, are today reporting progress toward unraveling the genetic basis of the most common form of diabetes.

They have identified three new genetic risk factors and confirmed five others that were discovered over the last few years. An additional risk factor identified by one group has not yet been confirmed by others.

Together, the genetic defects account for about 5 percent of the risk of getting the illness, said David Altshuler, associate professor of genetics and medicine at Harvard Medical School and a leader of one of the four teams that included the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

"The picture that is emerging is of multiple genes, each with a modest effect" on diabetes, he said.

Overall, genetics account for about half the risk of getting type 2 diabetes, according to Altshuler. Environment and such behaviors as obesity and lack of exercise account for the remaining risk.

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff

The data are so fresh and preliminary that researchers have not submitted a paper to a scientific journal yet. But Pamela Sklar, a geneticist at the Broad Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital, said yesterday that new genome scans have identified a crop of previously unsuspected genes that -– at first glance, at least -– may be connected to bipolar disorder.

Sklar spoke to the Boston Mental Health Research Symposium at the Boston Harbor Hotel, an event sponsored by NARSAD -– The Mental Health Research Association, a major funder of research on mental illness. The results are far from definitive, she said, and need to be replicated.

Sklar and others are taking advantage of rapid advances in gene-scanning technology to try to find the elusive genes for bipolar disorder –- which is believed to affect about 1 percent of the population -– as well as schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.

This week's Science includes a special section on germ cells -- the reproductive cells of an organism.

George Q. Daley of Children's Hospital Boston, Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute asks whether the cup is half empty or half full for embryonic stem cells.

David C. Page of the Whitehead Institute and MIT considers the mysteries of sexual identity from the germ cell's perspective.

Alexander F. Schier of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT writes about the death and birth of RNAs during the maternal-zygotic transition.

Also in Science, Rachael L. Neve of Harvard and McLean Hospital is an author of a new study in mice about neurons competing to encode a memory in the brain.

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT are part of a team that has discovered new genetic risk factors for Crohn's disease.

Reporting in the online Nature Genetics, they identify new genes that are involved in the immune system's response to bacteria. Crohn's disease, which affects about half a million Americans, is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease.

The authors include John D. Rioux, who has moved from the Broad to the Universite de Montreal, Ramnik J. Xavier, Alan Huett and Petric Kuballa of MGH, Todd Green of the Broad, and Mark J. Daly of the Broad and MGH.

Eric S. Lander (left), founding director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and a leader of the Human Genome Project, has won the 2007 Society for Biomolecular Sciences Achievement Award for his study of genes and how they function in health and disease.

He will receive the award, which carries a $5,000 honorarium, and present a talk called "Beyond the Human Genome" at this week's SBS meeting in Montreal. Past recipients have included Stuart L. Schreiber, also of the Broad, in 2004.

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have won a three-year, $4.2 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to study genes that may put people at risk for heart attacks, the hospital said.

Dr. David Altshuler, also a founding member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and Dr. Sek Katherisan will look at gene variations in 1,500 people who had heart attacks at an early age and 1,500 who did not. They will use data from a study started in 1998 at eight sites, including Mass. General, that make up the Myocardial Infarction Genetics Consortium.

In men under 50 and women under 60, genes may play a greater role in heart attacks, they said. Heart attacks cluster in certain families, regardless of traditional risk factors, but this inherited risk is not explained by gene variants already known to contribute to disease.

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff

It looks to be the largest single gift ever for research into mental illness: The Broad Institute, the genomics powerhouse in Cambridge, announced this evening that it will receive $100 million to figure out the genetics of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The money comes from the Stanley Medical Research Institute, a family philanthropy based in Maryland.

It will go mainly to gather and analyze thousands of DNA samples from people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, in hopes of finally figuring out the complex genetics behind the diseases.