dgmacarthur | September 10, 2008This story doesn't seem to have got much press - understandably, since the media is getting sick of "first" genomes, and there's very little useful information available in the press releases - but a collaborative effort between Saudi Biosciences, the Beijing Genomics Institute and bioinformatics provider CLCbio has announced the sequencing of the first Arab genome.
We're talking standard genomics-by-press-release here: there's no information about the nature of the sample, and no release of actual data. The one nugget of information in the press release is that the genome was sequenced using…
dgmacarthur | September 10, 2008Update: Please RSVP on Facebook if possible.
Tim Lambert from Deltoid has organised a ScienceBlogs millionth comment party in Sydney. I'll be there as well (albeit probably looking a little frazzled and well in need of a beer, as I move to the UK on the following Monday!).
Here's what Sydney readers need to know:
Why? Because ScienceBlogs is rapidly approaching one million comments (check the the top right of your screen for the count-up to M-Day)
When: 7pm, Wednesday 17th September
Where: The Attic Bar of the Arthouse Hotel (out the back door and up the stairs on the outside of the hotel), a…
dgmacarthur | September 10, 2008A quick note for bioinformaticians in the audience: Neil Saunders has an excellent post on parsing (i.e. processing a file to retrieve specific sections of interest). Neil's hints are a useful introduction for beginners, but also provide some handy reminders for long-time programmers.
dgmacarthur | September 10, 2008
Yesterday I discussed the decision of personal genomics company 23andMe to slash its price for a genome scan by 60%, to under $400.
In the comments to that post, industry observer David Hamilton pointed me to an article he's written for BNET on the implications of 23andMe's price plunge, which (like everything he writes) is well worth a read.
Hamilton has long argued, quite compellingly, that the true business model of personal genomics companies relies only indirectly on selling genome scans to consumers:
...personal-genomics companies don't intend to make money by selling the tests.…
dgmacarthur | September 9, 200823andMe is one of three companies currently providing chip-based personal genomics assays, which provide information about up to a million sites of common variation throughout the human genome. These companies provide insight into a limited but informative slice of your genetic diversity, as I discussed yesterday, giving you information about variants contributing to the risk of a number of common diseases and other traits.
Since their launch earlier this year, 23andMe and competitor deCODEme have offered their genome scan services for a fraction under $1,000. Now 23andMe has announced a…
dgmacarthur | September 8, 2008This little USB drive represents the current pinnacle of luxury personal genomics. It's the product of Knome (pronounced "know me"), a Cambridge, MA-based biotech start-up fronted by genomics pioneer George Church (recently profiled in Wired). In return for $350,000, Knome's customers receive a shiny 8 Gb drive containing their entire genome sequence (or rather, a hefty fraction of it), along with specialised browser software for viewing it.
$350,000 is a hell of a lot of money to fork over for a few gigabytes of data. So, how much of a return will these customers be getting on their…
dgmacarthur | September 5, 2008I have every intention of living forever, but I'm deeply aware of a number of factors that stand in my way. I'm not female, for a start; I wasn't born to a young mother; I enjoy my food far too much to ever consider caloric restriction; and I hate exercise with a passion. So right now my game plan is basically to rely on advances in medical science, and hope like hell that I have the right genes - bearing in mind that at least 25% of variation in life expectancy is genetically determined.
Finding the actual genes that influence longevity, however, has long proved problematic. In fact, the…
dgmacarthur | September 4, 2008Nature News has a special feature on "big data" - a broad look at the demands of the brave new world of massively high-throughput data generation, and the solutions adopted by research institutes and corporations to deal with those demands.
The image to the left (from an article in the feature by Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow) is a picture of the office door of Tony Cox, head of sequencing informatics at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK. The 320 terabytes refers to the scale of the raw data being produced by the Sanger's next-generation sequencing machines as they chew through kilometres…
dgmacarthur | September 2, 2008Welcome to the new look Genetic Future, now hosted on ScienceBlogs.
In around five years, a complete genome sequence will be readily affordable for most citizens of wealthy industrialised nations - even those of us on a researcher's salary. At the same time we will have access to vast amounts of data about the effects of individual genetic variants on human variation and disease risk. Storing, processing and using genetic data to make effective health decisions will become an immense challenge both to healthcare providers and to individual consumers.
The revolution has already begun: right…
dgmacarthur | August 31, 2008Note: I'm splitting this off from my earlier post on 23andMe's encouragement of genetic testing of children, since I think this rather speculative argument distracts from the main point of that post.
I mentioned in my previous post that there's a real danger that parents might try to use information from current genetic tests to steer their children in specific directions (and that at least one company is already touting such a test) - but the information available right now from genome scans simply isn't accurate enough to justify such decisions.
For instance, to mention a field close to my…