Last night on NOVA scienceNOW there was a segment on the personal DNA tests currently being marketed to consumers (you can watch the segment on the website, unfortunately no ability to embed video on other sites). The host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, had his DNA tested by Navigenics and learned his "probability" as compared to the rest of the population for getting certain diseases; even deciding to learn the genotype associate with his APOE4 gene, the... Full Post
Lawrence Lessig has an interesting take on the recent dust up over Sen. Obama's positions on campaign financing and telecom immunity. In short, the Obama campaign is attacking Sen. Obama's strongest traits. I guess they don't want to be outdone on any measure by the McCain campaign (reversals on campaign finance, torture, tax cuts, off-shore oil drilling, and Iraq). Full Post
Researchers in Japan have created the first DNA molecule made from entirely artificially created bases. While some are trying to manufacture artificial life by creating DNA molecules in the lab, the aim of this research is to take advantage of, and in this case expand on, DNA's high information density to create a very dense data storage platform. Natural DNA has four different bases (A, G, C, and T) it can use to encode information.... Full Post
It turns out that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day. No, they didn't just share a birthday, they were actually born on the exact same day: February 12, 1809. In fact, there were even more parallels between their lives, e.g., both lost their mothers early in childhood and both suffered from depression. These and other similarities and differences are explored in recent books (e.g., Rebel Giants by historian David R.... Full Post
I have written a bit about the NCBI Short Read Archive (SRA), its internals, and data transfer rates. Here is some information about the data format people are using to submit data from the massively parallel sequencers to the SRA. I apologize in advance for all the acronyms. The SRA is currently accepting 454 data in standard flowgram format (SFF) and Solexa in SRF format. Soon 454 and AB SOLiD will support the SRF format... Full Post