The human genome is thought to harbor 50,000 to 100,000 genes, of which about half have been sampled to date in the form of expressed sequence tags. An international consortium was organized to develop and map gene-based sequence tagged site markers on a set of two radiation hybrid panels and a yeast artificial chromosome library. More than 16,000 human genes have been mapped relative to a framework map that contains about 1000 polymorphic genetic markers. The gene map unifies the existing genetic and physical maps with the nucleotide and protein sequence databases in a fashion that should speed the discovery of genes underlying inherited human disease. The integrated resource is available through a site on the World Wide Web at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/SCIENCE96/.

We present the first results of the PACS-CS project which aims to simulate 2 þ 1 flavor lattice QCD on the physical point with the nonperturbatively OðaÞ-improved Wilson quark action and the Iwasaki gauge action. Numerical simulations are carried out at ¼ 1:9, corresponding to the lattice spacing of a ¼ 0:0907ð13Þ fm, on a 32 3 Â 64 lattice with the use of the domain-decomposed HMC algorithm to reduce the up-down quark mass. Further algorithmic improvements make possible the simulation whose up-down quark mass is as light as the physical value. The resulting pseudoscalar meson masses range from 702 MeV down to 156 MeV, which clearly exhibit the presence of chiral logarithms. An analysis of the pseudoscalar meson sector with SU(3) chiral perturbation theory reveals that the next-to-leading order corrections are large at the physical strange quark mass. In order to estimate the physical up-down quark mass, we employ the SU(2) chiral analysis expanding the strange quark contributions analytically around the physical strange quark mass. The SU(2) low energy constants " l 3 and " l 4 are comparable with the recent estimates by other lattice QCD calculations. We determine the physical point together with the lattice spacing employing m , m K and m as input. The hadron spectrum extrapolated to the physical point shows an agreement with the experimental values at a few % level of statistical errors, albeit there remain possible cutoff effects. We also find that our results of f , f K and their ratio, where renormalization is carries out perturbatively at one loop, are compatible with the experimental values. For the physical quark masses we obtain m MS ud and m MS s extracted from the axial-vector Ward-Takahashi identity with the perturbative renormalization factors. We also briefly discuss the results for the static quark potential.

We calculate the binding energies for multi-nucleon bound states with the nuclear mass number less than or equal to 4 in 2+1 flavor QCD at the lattice spacing of a = 0.09 fm employing a relatively heavy quark mass corresponding to m π = 0.51 GeV. To distinguish a bound state from attractive scattering states, we investigate the volume dependence of the energy shift between the ground state and the state of free nucleons by changing the spatial extent of the lattice from 2.9 fm to 5.8 fm. We conclude that 4 He, 3 He, deuteron and dineutron are bound at m π = 0.51 GeV. We compare their binding energies with those in our quenched studies and also with several previous investigations.

We established a protocol for the prediction of the coding sequences of unidentified human genes based on the double selection and sequence analysis of cDNA clones with inserts carrying unreported 5'-terminal sequences and with insert sizes corresponding to nearly full-length transcripts. By applying the protocol, cDNA clones with inserts longer than 2 kb were isolated from a cDNA library of human immature myeloid cell line KG-1, and the coding sequences of 40 new genes were predicted. A computer search of the sequences indicated that 20 genes contained sequences similar to known genes in the GenBank/EMBL databases. The sequences of the remaining 20 genes were entirely new, and characteristic protein motifs or domains were identified in 32 genes. Other sequence features noted were that the coding sequences of 23 genes were followed by relatively long stretches of 3'-untranslated sequences and that 5 genes contained repetitive sequences in their 3'-untranslated regions. The chromosomal location of these genes has been determined. By increasing the scale of the above analysis, the coding sequences of many unidentified genes can be predicted.