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Tag Archives: genomics

George Church in Newsweek: Why Get Your Genome Sequenced?

In a “web exclusive” for Newsweek (meaning, no room for this in our shrinking paper magazine), George M. Church, Harvard professor of genetics, a co-founder of DTC genomics firm Knome, and an adviser to several other DNA diagnostic companies, writes: “The message is not ‘Here’s your destiny. Get used to it!’ Instead, it’s ‘Here’s your […]

Synthetic Biology Roundup

Life’s been too hectic lately to keep up with all the cool little synbio nuggets churned up by the Internet over the past couple of weeks. Just wanted to catch up with a few items I particularly enjoyed. First, this interview from Gizmodo with Michael Specter, who recently wrote a piece on synthetic biology in […]

Linda Avey on Mother Jones’ 23andMe Story

In response to my last post about the Mother Jones story on DTC genomics company 23andMe, I got a (friendly) email from Linda Avey, who left the company in September to start an Alzheimer’s research foundation called Brainstorm. Avey wrote that although she no longer speaks for the company, she felt it was important to […]

Mother Jones on the Real DTC Genomics Business Model

Does Mother Jones know that Linda Avey has left the building? I suppose Shannon Brownlee’s article on 23andMe in the November/December issue of the magazine could have gone to press before cofounder Avey’s departure was announced September 4, 2009, and was widely discussed in the genomics community. But even on the MoJo blog yesterday, there’s […]

Big, Blue Horse Enters Sequencing Race

Now, this is interesting. Writing in the New York Times, John Markoff reports that  “one of the oldest names in computing is joining the race to sequence the genome for $1,000. On Tuesday, I.B.M. plans to give technical details of its effort to reach and surpass that goal, ultimately bringing the cost to as low […]

DNA Sequencing Gets Faster, Cheaper

So-called third-generation gene sequencing company Complete Genomics Inc. announced earlier this week that it has sequenced and delivered 14 human genomes to customers since March 2009, more than doubling the number of complete human DNA sequences published in the world to date. (The blog Fierce Biotech has a good analysis of the news.) Complete Genomics’ […]

Actually, All Men Are Islands

“Scientists estimate that there are about 1,000 different species of microbes living in the human gut and about as many more separate species on human skin,” reports this story from the Sacramento Bee. The microbes form colonies that settle in different areas of the body, which Jeffrey Gordon, a microbiologist at Washington University in St. […]

DNA Sequencing, the Horse Race

From the website of British nonprofit biomedical funding organization the Wellcome Trust, a nice article that includes clearly animated explanations of the current methods used for DNA sequencing, as well as a brief overview of “third generation” sequencers, which we should see soon. Companies mentioned include 454 Life Sciences, Solexa, Illumina, SOLiD, Pacific Biosciences, Oxford […]