• Why Big Data is Big: The Digital Nervous System

    O'Reilly Radar | Where does all the data in "big data" come from? Web companies are the forerunners. Driven by social, mobile and cloud technology, there is an important transition taking place, leading to a data-enabled world that those companies inhabit today. 

    Sep 3, 2012

  • Gemini Launch From Nimbus Signals Possibilities for Flash Storage

    Bio-IT World | Nimbus Data Systems doesn’t have a life sciences customer on a par with its marquee clients eBay and Lockheed Martin, but chances are good that the rapidly growing performance, endurance and affordability of flash storage -- as featured in Nimbus’ new Gemini system -- will soon be winning over customers

    Aug 30, 2012

  • Caltech Scientists Build Computational Model of Sea Urchin Development

    Caltech | Biologists at Caltech have built the first predictive computational model for the gene network that controls the early stages of embryonic development in the popular model organism, the sea urchin, confirming that interactions among a few dozen genes suffice to tell an embryo how to start the development of different body parts.

     

    Aug 29, 2012

  • CAP Releases Clinical Next-Gen Sequencing Checklist

    CAP Today | With more and more clinical labs turning to next-generation sequencing (NGS), the College of American Pathologists has published the United States' first standards for accrediting labs that perform NGS for clinical purposes.

    Aug 28, 2012

  • Active in Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing

    New York Times | Within a few years, Amazon.com's creative destruction of both traditional book publishing and retailing may be footnotes to the company’s larger and more secretive goal: giving anyone on the planet access to an almost unimaginable amount of computing power.  

    Aug 28, 2012

  • John Boyce Previews the Consumer Genetics Conference

    CGC | John Boyce, CEO GnuBio and the co-founder of The Consumer Genetics Conference, discusses the history behind this successful show and previews the highlights of the 2012 program, being held October 3-5 in Boston. 

    Aug 27, 2012

  • The Unsung Heroes Behind Those Big Genomics Breakthroughs

    The Guardian | A core facility is a slightly unusual niche for a career scientist – not an independent researcher, not a lecturer, but more like running a small-to-medium sized biotechnology company that happens to be not-for-profit. 

    Aug 27, 2012

  • From Google to Flatiron Health and the Fight Against Cancer

    Business Insider | After selling their start-up, Invite Media, to Google for $81 million, Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg have founded a new company, Flatiron Health, aimed at devising ways to help mine clinical data and cure cancer. 

    Aug 24, 2012

  • Video: Nancy Kelley on the New York Genome Center

    Bio-IT World | Video: Nancy Kelley, founding executive director of the New York Genome Center, speaks on camera with Bio-IT World editor Kevin Davies about the rapid progress and future plans for the new genome center currently under construction in the SoHo district of Manhattan.

    Aug 23, 2012

  • Klebsiella Pneumoniae Superbug Killed Six at NIH Clinical Center

    Huffington Post | Scientists are reporting how next-generation sequencing identified a deadly antibiotic-resistant 'superbug' that spread alarmingly through the medical center at the NIH, ultimately claiming six lives before the source of infection was confirmed and the microbe eradicated.

    Aug 22, 2012

  • deCODE Study Finds Older Dads Pass On More Genetic Mutations

    Wall Street Journal | According to the latest publication from Iceland's deCODE Genetics, a sequencing study reveals that older fathers pass on more new genetic mutations to their children than younger fathers, thus increasing their children's risk of autism, schizophrenia and other diseases.

    Aug 22, 2012

  • QED: Hopkins Algorithm Ranks the Beauty of Drug Chemistry

    Bio-IT World | Companies such as Optibrium are praising the “Quantitative Estimate of Drug-Likeness” (QED) algorithm to rank chemical compounds based on their oral bioavailability, developed by the University of Dundee's Andrew Hopkins and colleagues.

    Aug 21, 2012

  • Amazon Web Services Launches Amazon Glacier Archival Storage

    Bio-IT World | How does 1 cent/Gigabyte sound? That's the potential pricepoint of Amazon's new Amazon Glacier archival storage solution designed for data archiving and backup that is already gaining the attention of companies such as Complete Genomics. 

    Aug 21, 2012

  • The Biophysics of 3-D Genome Modeling

    Wired | Harvard University biophysicist Erez Lieberman Aiden is helping to open new windows into the study of the 3-D topological structure of chromosomes.

    Aug 20, 2012

  • Halcyon Molecular Quietly Shuts Down Sequencing Operation

    GigaOM | Halcyon Molecular, one of the many companies that was working on next-generation DNA sequencing technologies, has quietly ceased operations due to a shortage of funds, GigaOM reports.

    Aug 20, 2012

  • Reproducibility Initiative to Increase the Value of Biomedical Research

    Bio-IT World | Science Exchange, the open-access publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS), and open data repository figshare, have announced the launch of the Reproductibility Initiative -- a new program to help scientists, institutions and funding agencies validate their critical research findings.

    Aug 17, 2012

  • Are Drug Companies Faking an Innovation Crisis? Uh, No.

    Discover Magazine | Derek Lowe, a veteran pharmaceutical chemist and blogger, provides a withering rebuttal of a recent commentary in the British Medical Journal that argued that the “widely touted innovation crisis in pharmaceuticals is a myth.”

    Aug 17, 2012

  • Thirty Groups Enter CLARITY Clinical Genome Interpretation Challenge

    Bio-IT World | Organizers of the CLARITY Challenge at Boston Children’s Hospital are thrilled that 30 academic and commercial organizations have entered the genome interpretation contest, although the entrant list does not include the major US/UK genome centers and consumer genomics firms.  

    Aug 16, 2012

  • By George: Researchers Turn Book Into DNA Code

    Wall Street Journal | Harvard University researchers led by George Church have encoded the text of Church's forthcoming book Regenesis into DNA and then accurately read back the text, they report in Science magazine. 

    Aug 16, 2012

  • Myriad Wins Gene Patent Ruling From U.S. Appeals Court

    Reuters | By a vote of 2-to-1, a federal appeals court has upheld its decision to uphold Myriad Genetics' patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast and ovarian cancer genes, after the U.S. Supreme Court told it to take another look at the hotly contested case. 

    Aug 16, 2012