Len A. Pennacchio is an American

molecular biologist Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...

, the head of the Genetic Analysis Program and the Genomic Technologies Program at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California.JGI – Len A. Pennacchio
, retrieved 2011-04-04. Pennacchio did his undergraduate studies at Sonoma State University and then went on to graduate studies at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, receiving a Ph.D. in genetics in 1998. He became a research scientist at the

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

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 The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a ...

with an analysis of

human chromosome 16 Chromosome 16 is one of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in humans. People normally have two copies of this chromosome. Chromosome 16 spans about 90 million base pairs (the building material of DNA) and represents just under 3% of the total DNA in ce ...

. 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 Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels. CVD includes coronary artery diseases (CAD) such as angina and myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack). Other CVDs include stroke, hea ...

.. In 2008, ''Genome Technology'' magazine named him as one of 30 promising young researchers in their annual "Tomorrow's PIs" edition..

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pennacchio, Len A. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American biologists American molecular biologists Sonoma State University alumni Stanford University alumni Recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers