March 6, 2014
Our first view into the `blackout zones' of the human genome
Imagine opening Google Earth to find a large blackout zone roughly the size of Africa covering the surface of the globe. This region is completely unexplored and unknown.
Stories by Karen Miga
Karen H. Miga, PhD, is a postdoctoral scholar and satellite DNA biologist. She has proudly called the 'blackout zone' of the human genome her scientific home through both her doctorate work at Duke University and with her ongoing research program at the at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Through her work with Jim Kent at UC Santa Cruz and Hunt Willard at Duke University, she helped to contribute roughly 60 million bases of centromeric sequences to the reference sequence of the human genome.