Pond snails used in the experiment, Lymnaea stagnalis, have been used for over 25 years to study learning and memory. Animals, like humans, excel at some tasks but not others according to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Surveys of the genomic terrain of cancer have turned up a curious phenomenon in some tumor cells: a massive rearrangement of DNA in one or a few chromosomes, thought to be produced during a single cell cycle. In a new study, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute demonstrate how this sudden, isolated shuffling of genetic material - known as chromothripsis - can occur.

Millions of genetic variants have been discovered over the last 25 years, but interpreting the clinical impact of the differences in a person's genome remains a major bottleneck in genomic medicine. In a paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine on May 27, a consortium including investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Partners HealthCare present ClinGen, a program to evaluate the clinical relevance of genetic variants for use in precision medicine and research.