dgmacarthur
Posts by this author
October 27, 2009
A while back Dan Vorhaus and Lawrence Moore wrote a fantastic series of guest posts here on Genetic Future on the issue of what would happen to customer data in the event that a direct-to-consumer genetic testing company went bankrupt - here's the introduction, a detailed analysis of the…
October 25, 2009
It's been an intensive week of genomics here at the American Society of Human Genetics meeting, and I haven't been able to grab time to blog as much as I'd have liked. In fact there's a whole load of genomics news I'll be trying to cover in some detail over the next couple of weeks; for the moment…
October 14, 2009
I'll be away for the American Society of Human Genetics meeting in Hawaii for most of the next couple of weeks - I'll be covering the conference primarily via Twitter, and you can follow all of the tweets from the conference using the #ASHG2009 hashtag.
Genetics bloggers/tweeters should also…
October 13, 2009
Details are pretty sketchy, but a press release announced today suggests that personal genomics company 23andMe has performed a genome-wide association study comparing 100 current or former professional NFL players with a set of controls of unspecified sample size.
The shocking result:
The study…
October 7, 2009
Four scientists - including the omnipresent J. Craig Venter (left) - have penned an opinion piece in the latest issue of Nature based results from five individuals genotyped by two separate personal genomics companies. The article highlights some deficiencies in the way that genetic data are…
October 7, 2009
The latest issue of Nature contains an embarrassment of riches for those of us interested in personal genomics, and indeed I'm having trouble figuring out which article to write about first.
Just look at the options: there's a review on approaches to tracking down the missing heritability of…
October 6, 2009
IBM's announcement that it will be entering the DNA sequencing technology race (which I mentioned briefly earlier today) has created a tremendous amount of mainstream media interest. That's understandable given IBM's size and history of innovation, but how likely are they to represent serious…
October 6, 2009
Things are as usual moving at ludicrous speed in the world of genomics, but sadly I only have time to post a few pointers to some of the most striking developments.
IBM is moving into the third-generation sequencing arena. The company is developing a new sequencing technology based on tiny…
October 6, 2009
Last week I noted a highly controversial plan by the UK Border Agency to begin using DNA and isotope testing to help determine the geographical origins of refugees, for use in making decisions about whether or not to grant asylum.
A reader has just pointed me to this recent post on ScienceInsider…
September 29, 2009
ScienceInsider reports that plans by the UK Border Agency to employ DNA and isotope testing to test the origins of asylum seekers are being met with outrage by scientists and refugee advocates.
There's not much information about the precise tests that will be employed, but what information has…
September 16, 2009
In this final post of their three-part series, lawyers Daniel Vorhaus and Lawrence Moore of the superb blog Genomics Law Report analyse the legal repercussions of a personal genomics company going bankrupt. In part one of the series Vorhaus and Moore analysed the privacy policies of two…
September 16, 2009
Kevin Davies from Bio-IT World has two interviews up today relevant to new DNA sequencing technologies.
Firstly, there's an excellent interview with Clive Brown, vice president of development and informatics for Oxford Nanopore Technologies - one of the most promising contenders in the rapidly…
September 15, 2009
Mark Henderson's interview with Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of personal genomics company 23andMe, is well worth a read. The big story is this: Wojcicki has floated the possibility of offering discounted genome scans to clinicians "to teach them to interpret genomic information that is now readily…
September 15, 2009
In the second of three guest posts, lawyers Daniel Vorhaus and Lawrence Moore of the superb blog Genomics Law Report discuss the implications for personal genomics customers if their provider goes bankrupt. In part one of the series (posted yesterday), Vorhaus and Moore dissected the implications…
September 14, 2009
In this series of three guest posts, lawyers Daniel Vorhaus and Lawrence Moore of the excellent Genomics Law Report provide insight into the intriguing question of what happens to customers' genetic data in the event that a personal genomics company goes out of business. Part II and III of this…
September 9, 2009
My esteemed blogging colleague Ginny Hughes will be presenting at next week's Cold Spring Harbor Personal Genomes meeting (which I, sadly, will not be attending) on genetic testing for psychiatric diseases. As part of preparing for this she'd like to get a sense of the level of interest in this…
September 2, 2009
David Clark at Genomics Law Report has a thorough dissection of the recent and highly restrictive laws passed in Germany governing access to genetic testing. You should read the whole thing to get a sense of what happens when governments grab the wrong end of the regulation stick, but here's the…
September 2, 2009
The NY Times has an article entitled "Buyer beware of home DNA tests" that adopts the paternalistic party line of the medical establishment: taking DNA tests without a doctor's advice is hazardous to your health.
Remarkably, the article acknowledges that qualified genetic counsellors are few and…
August 31, 2009
Sequencing giant Illumina has announced that it has delivered its first commercial personal genome sequence. The sequence was generated by the genome sequencing service launched by Illumina back in June, and was delivered in collaboration with new personal genomics company Pathway Genomics.…
August 27, 2009
Peter Aldhous has a great piece of detective work in New Scientist, which has revealed a bizarre and sporadic glitch in the online software provided by personal genomics company deCODEme to allow customers to view their genetic data.
The glitch appears to be restricted to the display of data from…
August 26, 2009
Complete Genomics is finally back on the road towards fulfilling its promises of $5000 human genome sequences, after delays in obtaining funding for a massive new facility pushed back its plans by six months. The $45 million in funding it announced this week will be sufficient to build the new…
August 21, 2009
In the comments to a previous post defending big genetics, Andro Hsu relates an anecdote that warrants repeating:
IIRC, at the December NIH/CDC meeting Francis Collins suggested that the way to get to the bottom of the missing heritability, the common disease common variant hypothesis, gene-gene…
August 19, 2009
Dan Vorhaus has a great post in Genomics Law Report outlining recommendations made by a recent NIH-CDC workshop on the scientific foundations of personal genomics. The workshop included key stake-holders from academia, policy advisory groups and the personal genomics industry.
The recommendations…
August 19, 2009
Over at Gene Expression, p-ter has a post up defending the "big genetics" approach, noting that large-scale hypothesis-free genetics studies have consistently yielded important results for follow-up detailed fine-scale studies.
It's a sound argument. I've argued in the past that many of the fears…
August 18, 2009
A colleague just pointed me to The Human Genre Project, a growing collection of short writing (poems, short stories) assembled into the set of human chromosomes
The quality is uneven, but some are genuinely moving, some are cute, and others convey the challenges and uncertainties of our genetic…
August 16, 2009
A useful reminder for evolutionary biologists and science journalists, posted to the Evoldir list by Joel Parker:
I have noticed many evolutionary biologists making an embarrassing mistake of falsely attributing the first use of the tree analogy to Darwin. This has occurred in numerous…
August 14, 2009
Mihaescu, R., van Hoek, M., Sijbrands, E., Uitterlinden, A., Witteman, J., Hofman, A., van Duijn, C., & Janssens, A. (2009). Evaluation of risk prediction updates from commercial genome-wide scans Genetics in Medicine, 11 (8), 588-594 DOI: 10.1097/GIM.0b013e3181b13a4f
Caroline Wright from the…
August 13, 2009
Most of the posts I've written recently have involved next-generation DNA sequencing in one way or another, which may have left some readers scratching their heads - keeping track of the different technologies, how they work, and their strengths and weaknesses is a challenge even for those immersed…
August 12, 2009
A tweet from personal genomics company 23andMe (see screenshot below) sparked my interest:
I knew 23andMe had been successful in recruiting Parkinsons patients as part of its targeted drive, and the 337 unspecified "patients" are the product of their broader recruitment drive for diseased…
August 12, 2009
I've just discovered a very promising new blog in the genomics sphere (well, technically it's a newly relaunched blog) run by a group at the University of Birmingham.
Two posts by Nick Loman are of immediate interest to readers here. Firstly, I highly recommend Nick's thorough dissection of…