Len A. Pennacchio is an American molecular biologist, the head of the Genetic Analysis Program and the Genomic Technologies Program at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California.
Pennacchio did his undergraduate studies at Sonoma State University and then went on to graduate studies at Stanford University, receiving a Ph.D. in genetics in 1998. He became a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1999, and joined the Joint Genome Institute in 2003. He retains his Lawrence Berkeley affiliation as well.
Pennacchio contributed to the human genome project with an analysis of human chromosome 16. His research has also explored gene regulation, the genetic basis of differences in body shape between different individuals, conserved sequences in the genome, and connections between junk DNA and heart disease.
In 2008, Genome Technology magazine named him as one of 30 promising young researchers in their annual "Tomorrow's PIs" edition.
References
- ^ JGI – Len A. Pennacchio Archived 2011-04-25 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 2011-04-04.
- Scientists decode human chromosome 16, PhysOrg.com, December 23, 2004.
- Pearson, Helen (November 16, 2006), "Genetic information: Codes and enigmas", Nature, 444 (7117): 259–261, doi:10.1038/444259a, PMID 17108933.
- Check, Erika (March 16, 2007), "How fat genes differ from thin ones: Resequencing effort unpicks genetics of body extremes", Nature, doi:10.1038/news070312-9.
- Sherriff, Lucy (September 7, 2007), "Missing DNA fails to kill mice", The Register.
- Fang, Janet (February 21, 2010), "Junk DNA holds clues to heart disease: Deleting a non-coding region leads to narrowing of arteries in mice", Nature, doi:10.1038/news.2010.82.
- Genome Technology Names 2008 'Tomorrow's PIs', RedOrbit, December 8, 2008.