Genome sequencing
Learnt Lessons
25/03/13 16:19 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan | HeLa cells;
When the genome of HeLa cancer cell line was published, it turned out that Henrietta Lacks' family did not appear to give its consent to have the genome published. Jeri Lacks-Whye, Lacks' granddaughter in a New York Times op-ed complained that the HeLa genome sequence should not have been published without their consent as it might have compromised their family's privacy. As a consequence, the researchers who published the HeLa genome apologized to the family, edited their news release, and took the HeLa data down. S. Pelech questions the value of sequencing genomes without strong phenotypic data to correlate with genetic variants, and finds it hard to accept that the privacy of Lacks' family was actually compromised in a meaningful way. HeLa cells are amongst the best characterized of these established cancer cell lines, so it is a real shame that the HeLa cell genome sequence will not be broadly accessible to cancer researchers to improve our understanding of this most deadly disease. Read More...
Night of the Living Dead Pigeon
15/03/13 16:18 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Ben Novak, is a 26-year-old genetics student who has put his graduate studies on hold to help bring the extinct passenger pigeon back from the dead by sequencing available fragments of the genome of the passenger pigeon from the slime left in museum specimens and comparing them to the genome of its cousin, the band-tailed pigeon. Working with evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Novak hopes to complete full sequences of the passenger and band-tailed pigeon genomes within a year. S. Pelech comments that even with the successful sequencing of the complete genome of the passenger pigeon, the site-directed mutagenesis of the genome of a living pigeon relative to convert it into a passenger pigeon is just too expensive and time-consuming to be worthwhile. Read More...
A Good Return
14/02/13 16:08 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
In his recent State of the Union address, US President Barack Obama made mention of how for every dollar the US government invested to map the human genome, $140 was returned to the US economy. This was based on a 2011 report by the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice, which calculated the direct, indirect, and induced impacts of human genome sequencing on employment, personal income, output, and tax revenue. S. Pelech challenges the accuracy of these estimates and pointed out that private industry and non-HGP government- and charity-funded investigator-driven projects really made the major in-roads in the identification and characterization of most of the human genes that have been targeted by the pharmaceutical and biotech industry to date. He also takes issue with the claims of the actual direct economic and scientific benefits of the Human Genome Project. Read More...
A Case for the Ages
11/01/13 16:03 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Brooke Greenberg is a 20 years old that appears to be the age of a toddler. While her doctors do not know the root of her apparent inability to age, Eric Schadt at Mount Sinai has been studying her genome to learn more about the aging process. S. Pelech provides some further details about this fascinating and tragic case. Read More...
The Alien Genome
18/09/12 13:20 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Craig Venter, speaking at the Wired Health Conference in New York, said that his company Synthetic Genomics and the J. Craig Venter Institute plan to develop a machine capable of sequencing and beaming back DNA data from Mars to support a search for extra-terrestrial genomes. S. Pelech argues that this proposition may not be so audacious as there are many biochemical observations that support the concept that life on Earth may have originated from Mars. Read More...
Sperm Seq
30/07/12 12:51 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Stephen Quake at Stanford University and his colleagues reported the first genetic comparison of 91 single sperm cells using a microfluidic chip and found that some of the cells had recombined in unexpected places. This recombination contributes to the genetic diversity between siblings, and this methodology might be used to diagnose male fertility, select eggs for in vitro fertilization, and identify mutated genes in individual cancer cells. S. Pelech points out that the ability to sequence genomes in single haploid cells provides the unique opportunity to examine the actual clustering of specific mutations on the very same protein and explore the possibilities of synergistic and antagonistic mutations. Read More...