A new paper just out in Cell by the Sinclair group gives us some intriguing but sobering information about aging and genomic integrity. The new twist to the ever evolving story is the Sirt1 protein might have at least two primary roles in the cell. The first role is to locate itself on DNA to…
Category: genetics
bioinformatics, genetics
Personal genomics keeps getting cheaper
by Ward • • 0 Comments
Personal genomics seem to be speeding up as fast as consumer electronics – soon there will be a need for a genome-gadget website. The latest news as reported by Genetic Future is the announcement of complete genome sequencing for $ 5,000 by mid 2009! The company behind this announcement is Complete Genomics which are new…
bioinformatics, genetics, information
The price of personal genomics keep coming down
by Ward • • 0 Comments
Just a few week ago I updated some of the price drops in personal genomics (price drop from $ 999 to $ 399 for the scanning of 500,000+ SNPs). But these personal genome scans are not the entire genome but for specific single nucleotide polymorphisms. The holy grail of personal genomics is the scanning of…
bioinformatics, genetics
New advances in personal genomics
by Ward • • 2 Comments
Image via CrunchBase There has been some interesting advances in personal genomics recently which is great news, but will the rise of cheap personal genome scanning result in improvement in our health? Price is one limiting factor for lack of adoption of personal genome scanning and its potential to lead to better health treatments (pharmagenomics).…
genetics, video
Your personal genome: Francis Collins
by Ward • • 1 Comment
Image by Getty Images via Daylife Francis Collins, the outgoing director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, has chosen currently not to get his personal genome scanned – why ? If you want a overview of current genome knowledge and personal genome research, take a look at this video. Charlie Rose is interviewing Francis…
brain health, enriched environment, genetics
Do ‘smart’ people live longer and what does this mean for Americans?
by Ward • • 4 Comments
: and why fly research does not always translate to humans. We all have heard, or read, that the lifespan of humans has steadily climbed over the centuries and the recent decades. This trend is generally true, but not absolute. The latest research published in the May 14, 2008 issue of PLoS ONE (complete text…
bioinformatics, genetics
Life is information
by Ward • • 1 Comment
DNA contains the information, in a code, that enables an organism to become ‘alive’. Life is really all about information. That is why the previous post regarding Google getting into health is not far fetched since Google is all about information. If you want to read a great series of articles about information and the…
bioinformatics, genetics
Who could make sense out of mountains of scientific data ?
by Ward • • 0 Comments
I posted earlier today about the mountain of cancer data donated by GlaxoSmithKline. While scientist and big pharmaceuticals are constantly generating more biological data the bottle neck problem is mining this data to find useful information. Over at PIMM, Attila in his blog discusses a feature article in Wired magazine and offers a potential solution…
genetics
Mountain of data
by Ward • • 0 Comments
Image via Wikipedia Many scientist believe that in the near future there will be breakthroughs due to our ability to generate huge data bases, and more importantly our ability to mine them. GlaxoSmithKline have done a huge and expensive study on cancer, and as of June 20 2008 released a mountain of data for free.…
genetics
personal genomics controversy
by Ward • • 5 Comments
Image via Wikipedia There are a number of companies (23andMe, deCODEme, Navigenics) that offer a service of scanning your genome, using microarray technology, for numerous (500,000 – 1,000,000) single nucleotide polymorphims (SNPs). SNPs, (snips), are one (not the only) source of variation in our genomes that make us all unique individuals, and offers us some…