West Saint Paul is a city in Dakota County, Minnesota, immediately south of the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota. The quirky naming in part comes from the fact that the city is on the "west" bank of the Mississippi River—the river flows toward the east at this point. A previous City of West St. Paul incorporated in the late 19th century and was situated in what is now called the Lower West Side of St. Paul. That city went bankrupt in the 1880s.^{[citation needed]} According to the West 7th/Fort Road foundation, St. Paul annexed the West Side,and was incorporated for two reasons: "to aid law enforcement--criminals could escape St. Paul authorities by crossing to the West Side and Dakota County--and to eliminate the Wabasha Street Bridge tolls which were inhibiting development on the West Side..."The current City of West St. Paul split from the western half of South St. Paul (thus the name West St. Paul was reused), and was incorporated in 1889, just south of the city of St. Paul. The population was 19,540 at the 2010 census, growing by 135 since 2000. West Saint Paul is known for its 2.5 mile retail strip along Robert Street. The city is pursuing a sister city relationship with West Saint Paul, MB (Canada).

Saint Paul ( /ˌseɪnt ˈpɔːl/; abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city's population at the 2010 census was 285,068. Saint Paul is the county seat of Ramsey County, the smallest and most densely populated county in Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city. Known as the "Twin Cities", these two cities form the core of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States, with about 3.3 million residents.

Founded near historic Native American settlements as a trading and transportation center, the city rose to prominence when it was named the capital of the Minnesota Territory in 1849. Though Minneapolis is better-known nationally, Saint Paul contains important institutions and the state government. Regionally, the city is known for the Xcel Energy Center, home of the Minnesota Wild, and for the Science Museum of Minnesota. As a business hub of the Upper Midwest, it is the headquarters of companies such as Ecolab. Saint Paul, along with its Twin City, Minneapolis, is known for its high literacy rate. It was the only city in the United States with a population of 250,000 or more to see an increase in circulation of Sunday newspapers in 2007.

Minnesota (ⁱ/mɪnɨˈsoʊtə/) is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state on May 11, 1858. Known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes", the state's name comes from a Dakota word for "sky-tinted water". Those waters, together with forests, parks, and wilderness areas, offer residents and tourists a variety of outdoor recreational opportunities.

Minnesota is the 12th most extensive and the 21st most populous of the U.S. states. Nearly 60% of its residents live in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area (known as the "Twin Cities"), the center of transportation, business, industry and education and home to an internationally known arts community. The remainder of the state consists of western prairies now given over to intensive agriculture; deciduous forests in the southeast, now cleared, farmed and settled; and the less populated North Woods, used for mining, forestry, and recreation.

George Church (August 28, 1954- ) is an American molecular geneticist. He is currently Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT, and a core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

With Walter Gilbert he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method in 1984 and helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 while he was a Research Scientist at newly formed Biogen Inc. He invented the broadly applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods, and DNA array synthesizers. Technology transfer of automated sequencing & software to Genome Therapeutics Corp. resulted in the first commercial genome sequence, (the human pathogen, Helicobacter pylori) in 1994.

He initiated the Personal Genome Project (PGP) in 2005, and, in 2007, he founded the U.S. personal genomics company Knome (with Jorge Conde and Sundar Subramaniam). He does research on synthetic biology and is director of the U.S. Department of Energy Center on Bioenergy at Harvard & MIT and director of the National Institutes of Health (NHGRI) Center of Excellence in Genomic Science at Harvard.

Matt Healy (born 1970, Paisley, Renfrewshire, UK) is a Scottish actor, who grew up in Oldham, Lancashire. He is best known for his role as Matthew King in the television soap series Emmerdale.

Born as David James Healy, when he was three years old his family moved from Paisley to Oldham, Lancashire, where he was brought up. He attended Oldham College and the University of Salford. After leaving college he travelled abroad until deciding to take up acting as a full-time career, but admits that he spent a lot of time "resting" and taking on manual jobs between finding roles. When he started acting he used the stage name Matt Healy because there was already was an actor named David Healy. In 1997, he toured in the stage play Girls' Night Out, playing a gay stripper.

Previous television appearances include Coronation Street, The Bill, Playing the Field and Holby City. He was almost considering giving up acting when, in 2004, he auditioned for the role of devious Matthew King on Emmerdale.

He made his first Emmerdale appearance on 4 March 2004, as the character Matthew King. He was in the soap for nearly five years and made his last screen appearance on 16 December 2008, when the character was killed on his wedding day.