Now on ScienceBlogs: HeartlandGate: Anti-Science Institute's Insider Reveals Secrets
Commentary on human genetics and evolution, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, and the personal genomics industry.
Daniel MacArthur
I write about the genetic and evolutionary basis of human variation, and the companies trying to sell you information about your genome.
Daniel also blogs about personal genomics at Genomes Unzipped.
Subscribe via RSS.
Follow me on Twitter.
April 29, 2010
Category: whole-genome sequencing
A new article in the Lancet describes the most thorough attempt yet made to extract useful clinical information from the whole genome sequence of a healthy individual (researcher Stephen Quake). But how much can a genome really tell us right now?
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 9:00 PM • 13 Comments •
Category: guest post
In a guest post, geneticist Kai Wang makes some serious criticisms of a recent review paper in Cell by Jon McClellan and Mary-Claire King. The Cell paper attacks the validity of recent genome-wide association studies, including some published by Wang; here, Wang fights back.
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 11:30 AM • 7 Comments •
April 28, 2010
Yesterday's inaugural Genomes, Environments, Traits (GET) meeting was by all accounts a massive success, pulling together the largest number of individuals with fully sequenced genomes ever assembled in the same room for a long day of discussion about the future...
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 4:15 PM • 5 Comments •
April 27, 2010
Category: genome-wide association studies
This critique of genome-wide association studies by Jon McClellan and Mary-Claire King in Cell is the latest salvo in a prolonged backlash against genome-wide association studies (GWAS).I hope to have more on the McClellan and King paper shortly, but in...
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 5:45 AM • 4 Comments •
April 21, 2010
Category: whole-genome sequencing
It's a big week for family genomics. I wrote a couple of days ago about the West family, all four members of which recently had their entire genomes sequenced by Illumina. Now an article in the Salt Lake Tribune reveals...
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 5:40 AM • •
April 19, 2010
Category: whole-genome sequencing
Sequencing company Illumina has announced that it has sequenced the complete genomes of four members of a nuclear family, including two teenage children. The announcement raises questions about the ethical implications of recreational genomics for children - do the potential harms outweigh the benefits?
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 5:00 PM • 16 Comments •
April 1, 2010
My previous post on the Myriad gene patent decision has resulted in one of the most useful and enjoyable comment threads in the history of this blog. The debate revolves around a single, central question: while it's clear that the loss...
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 10:00 AM • 2 Comments •
If you haven't already browsed through Nature's most recent edition, do so immediately - it's packed with juicy genomic goodness.I particularly enjoyed the brief commentaries from Francis Collins and Craig Venter, both providing retrospectives on the last decade of human genomics...
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 8:15 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: copy number variation
A massive study of common, large-scale DNA rearrangements in 16,000 complex disease patients has revealed... well, not much: it appears that common, large deletions and duplications play a relatively minor role in determining susceptibility to common diseases. But why would this be the case?
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 12:00 AM • 10 Comments •
Orac 02.14.2012
Tim Lambert 02.01.2012
Jason Rosenhouse 02.12.2012
Orac 01.26.2012
ERV 11.26.2011
