Researchers are Finalists for Time's 'Top 100 Most Influential' List

Penn State University genomicists Webb Miller and Stephan C. Schuster, in front of the Roche/454 Life Sciences Genome Sequencer 20 System that was used to sequence mammoth mitochondrial DNA from the hair of woolly mammoths. Credit: Penn State

Time Magazine soon will publish its 2009 list of the world's "Top 100 Most Influential" people, and the Penn State science team of Stephan Schuster and Webb Miller is in the running. Time has set up a Web site so that everyone can vote to select the top 100 winners out of the 200 finalists. Penn State fans can vote for the Penn State team by following this link.

Schuster and Miller 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. As Miller said, "I want to learn as much as I can about why large mammals become extinct because all my friends are large mammals."