The team report that three individuals were Europeans of diverse origins, including Spain and Sardinia, four were near Easterners who had been recruited to the fight, and two individuals had mixed genetic ancestry, suggesting they were the descendants of mixed relationships between Crusaders and near Easterners.

Today (17 April) Dr Matthew Hurles has been elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society, the UK's most prestigious scientific organisation. His work has provided many hundreds of families with clinical diagnoses and laid the foundations of national clinical genetic screening services in the UK and worldwide

Researchers have discovered a key clue into the development of the pancreas and brain by studying rare patients born without a pancreas. The study also identified an unexpected pathway in human pancreas development and confirmed this in mice.

Multiple new genes involved in hearing loss have been revealed in a large study of mouse mutants by researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, King’s College London, and colleagues. The new genes reveal the metabolic pathways and regulatory processes involved in hearing.

The datasets produced in this new study lay the foundations for producing the Cancer Dependency Map, a detailed rulebook for the precision treatment of cancer.

The oldest publicly-available strain of the cholera-causing bacterial species, Vibrio cholerae, has had its genetic code read for the first time. The results show that this strain is a unique, non-toxigenic strain of V. cholerae that’s distantly related to the strains of bacteria causing cholera pandemics today and in the past.

The GlaxoSmithKline prize specifically celebrates the science of mid-career researchers who have taken a career break. As part of the award, Dr Teichmann will deliver a lecture at a Society event and will submit an article to one of the Society’s publications.

The Darwin Tree of Life Project is just one of several initiatives across the globe working towards the ultimate goal of sequencing all complex life on Earth, in a venture known as the Earth BioGenome Project. The Sanger Institute will serve as a hub for sequencing and assembling the genomes of species from the British Isles. It will collaborate with partners from a breadth of UK-wide institutions, museums and universities to identify and collect species, and then to annotate and share the genomes.

Leaders from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control have signed a framework collaboration agreement, agreeing to work in partnership to help enable and improve the use of genomic technologies in monitoring dangerous bacteria in the European Union and European Economic Area.

For International Women's Day today (8 March) the Wellcome Genome Campus is celebrating its staff who lead the way in supporting equality and diversity in science. The day is being marked with its annual award for Best Practice for Supporting Equality and Diversity in Science.