• GWAS Reveals Genetic Variance in Metabolism

    Bio-IT World | A study published last week in Nature establishes a strong association between biochemical levels and the genetics of an individual. Researchers looked at genetic variation in human metabolism and discovered 37 new variants associated with concentrations of metabolites in the blood. The Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) was carried out by researchers at Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen Institute in Munich, Germany, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, King’s College and Metabolon.

    Sep 5, 2011

  • Building Biohacker Tools for Garage Labs

    Wired | CoFactor is a new company that aims to enable "biohackers"--individuals with pop-up garage labs who want to do biology outside of traditional environments.

    Sep 1, 2011

  • How to Build Successful Biotech Startups

    Xconomy | MIT's Bob Langer has founded about 24 companies and has 800 patents issued or pending. Langer talks about turning foundation and government money into startup successes.

    Sep 1, 2011

  • Ed Liu on Singapore Science and Jackson Lab Priorities

    Bio-IT World | "Singapore needs a refresh, and perhaps I do as well,” says Edison Liu, the CEO-elect of The Jackson Laboratory (JAX), who reflected last week on his decade in Singapore and his priorities for his return next year to the US at the legendary mammalian genetics institute.  

     

    Aug 29, 2011

  • Sequencing Shows World's Cholera Comes From Single Source

    BBC | By sequencing the genomes of 154 cholera bacteria samples, researchers at the Sanger Institute have identified a single global source: the Bay of Bengal.

    Aug 28, 2011

  • Of Mice and Men: Edison Liu Leaves Singapore to Head Jackson Laboratory

    Bio-IT World | Edison Liu, arguably the most prominent medical researcher in Singapore and the two-term president of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO), is returning to the United States after ten years to become the new president and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.

    Aug 26, 2011

  • UK Launches Cancer Genomics Project

    Nature News | The UK will launch a personalized medicine pilot project next month. The project will be led by Cancer Research UK and the Stratified Medicine Proamme and will screen 9,000 cancer patients.

    Aug 26, 2011

  • Samsung Launches Genome Analysis Service, Offers Free Genome

    Bio-IT World | Samsung SDS is launching beta testing of its new next generation sequencing data analysis service beginning September 1. The service will be in beta testing mode from September to November and will be offering free genome analysis (one genome per researcher) during the testing phase.

    Aug 23, 2011

  • NHGRI Funds Electronic Medical Record Genomics Network

    Bio-IT World | Grants worth $25 millions over the next four years from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) will support researchers that are part of the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) network.The grants will fund research to demonstrate that patients' genomic information linked to disease characteristics and symptoms in their electronic medical records can be used to improve their care.    

     

    Aug 22, 2011

  • Big-Bucks Biology's Broken Business Model

    Bio-IT World | The Skeptical Outsider | "Tell me how someone is compensated and I’ll tell you how they’ll behave,” goes the old adage. If non-monetary rewards are considered alongside financial remuneration this pretty much describes why federally funded research in the life sciences is producing less and less bang for more and more bucks. And why the scientific literature is at risk of becoming polluted with overreaching claims, obfuscated shortcomings, and non-reproducible results. 

     

    Aug 22, 2011

  • Mary Jane's First Genome

    Boston Herald | Kevin McKernan, chief developer of the SOLiD platform, has a new venture and has been spending quite a lot of time with the Cannabis plant. Medicinal Genomics has announced the full genome sequencing of Cannabis.

    Aug 18, 2011

  • Stanford Team Reports Advance in Computational Drug Repositioning

    Wall Street Journal | In a spot of "educated fishing," Atul Butte and colleagues at Stanford University report an innovative way to identify and reposition drugs against diseases they weren't originally designed to combat. The stories of two such repurposed drugs, targeting inflammatory bowel disease and lung cancer, are described in a pair of new papers in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

    Aug 17, 2011

  • Cancer and the Genome: The Bigger Picture

    New York Times | New theories about cancer suggest pseudogenes in the noncoding regions of DNA and microbial gene exchange may be behind the development of some cancers. 

    Aug 17, 2011

  • Evolution of the Textbook

    HHMI Bulletin | Publishers are beginning to go digital with biology textbooks, pushing boundaries to give students a more personalized, interactive experience.

    Aug 16, 2011

  • DREAM6 Breaks New Ground

    Bio-IT World | Roughly five years ago the organizers of DREAM—Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessment and Methods—set out to find the best algorithms for inferring biological networks from blinded data sets. It turns out there's no such critter as the perfect algorthm.  

    Aug 15, 2011

  • Halcyon Molecular: Anatomy of a NGS Start-Up

    The Independent | William and Michael Andregg, co-founders of Silicon Valley next-gen sequencing start-up Halcyon Molecular, have given their most extensive interview to date on the motivation and circumstances that led to the launch of this ambitious company in 2008, funded in large part by the 'PayPal mafia.' 

    Aug 15, 2011

  • Back to Berlin for PacBio's Jonas Korlach

    San Jose Mercury News | The co-founder of Pacific Biosciences, Jonas Korlach, is preparing to return to Berlin for the official unveiling of the first PacBio instrument in his native land. In 1989, a 16-year-old Korlach walked through the Brandenburg Gate, just a few miles from his home in East Berlin. 

     

    Aug 12, 2011

  • Five Questions for Broad Institute CIO Martin Leach

    Broad Institute | Settling into his new digs at the Broad Institute, CIO Martin Leach answers five questions about IT at the Broad, his journey to the institute, and lessons that can be learned from the world of video gaming.

    Aug 12, 2011

  • Data for Doctors: Big Data Meets a Big Business

    GigaOM | Ted Corbett, director of knowledge management at Seattle Children’s Hospital, is using software from a company called Tableau to draw smart inferences from the 10 terabytes of data locked up in his servers and warehousing appliances.

    Aug 9, 2011

  • Turning Blood into Gold: The Wellness Chip

    Bio-IT World | COVER STORY: Fourteen years after conceiving a tool to discover and measure protein biomarkers, Larry Gold and his colleagues at SomaLogic are poised to see their first diagnostic—a lung cancer blood test--reach the marketplace.

    Aug 5, 2011