Well, the US is not the only place with interesting politics. I recently came across this letter from Kevin McKernan, Senior Director of Scientific Operations at Applied Biosystems/Life Technologies, to the House of Lords in the UK (pdf). In the letter, McKernan expresses his concern that the Sanger Institute's decision to return their SOLiD instruments was due to some long-standing resentment of Applied Biosystems due to their association with Craig Venter and his challenge to... Full Post
Francis Collins was confirmed as the head of NIH today. Since the announcement of his nomination, there has been considerable hand wringing from scientists concerning everything from his religion to his optimism. Ho hum. We are supposed to be scientists. We are supposed to use data to formulate hypotheses. Nothing in Dr. Collins direction of NHGRI, shepherding of the Human Genome Project, or championing of GINA provide any evidence to support this reaction. The are... Full Post
In his usual, no-holds-barred, rambling way, Nobel Laureate James Watson takes cancer research in general and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in particular to task for the failure in the War on Cancer and the continued research funding focus on the genetics of cancer in an Op-Ed for the New York Times. Interesting timing given my previous post. Watson identifies several problems with the current state of affairs and lurches from one to another in... Full Post
Today in the New England Journal of Medicine the second paper detailing the whole genome sequencing of a tumor and its matched normal was published: Recurring Mutations Found by Sequencing an Acute Myeloid Leukemia Genome. Accompanying the article is an editorial well worth reading by Jim Downing from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital discussing the significance of these whole genome sequence efforts from the medical researcher and practitioner's perspective. Dan Koboldt has posted a nice... Full Post
At the NHGRI Sequencing Advisory Panel meeting last week, there was some confusion about how we use SNP array data and dbSNP in the DNA sequencing world. SNP arrays are, when you boil it down, a quick and cheap way to sequence, i.e., determine the nucleotide at, specific DNA positions in the genome. For each sample to be sequenced at The Genome Center, we use SNP array data from that sample to measure breadth of... Full Post