Two Penn State scientists in TIME Magazine's Top 100 Most Influential
Penn State professors Stephan Schuster and Webb Miller have been named among "The World's Most Influential People" by TIME Magazine. The May 11 issue of the magazine describes the "TIME 100" winners and their accomplishments. Schuster, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and Miller, a professor of biology and of computer science and engineering, are leaders of a team that is the first to report the genome-wide sequence of an extinct animal, the woolly mammoth. They developed a novel approach for gene studies that reads ancient DNA highly efficiently. They also were the first to achieve the successful sequencing of genes from the extinct Tasmanian tiger. Their research has opened the door to the widespread, nondestructive use of museum specimens to learn why mammals become extinct and how extinctions might be prevented. (more)