• BGI Announces Cloud Genome Assembly Service

    Bio-IT World | SHENZHEN, CHINA—At the BGI Bioinformatics Software Release Conference yesterday, researchers announced two new Cloud-based software-as-a-service offerings for next-gen data analysis. Hecate and Gaea (named for Greek gods) are “flexible computing” solutions for do novo assembly and genome resequencing. 

     

    Jul 6, 2011

  • Ashburner, Troyanskaya Win ISCB Computational Biology Awards

    PLoS Computational Biology | The International Society for Computational Biology has given its 2011 senior scientist award to British geneticist Michael Ashburner (University of Cambridge, UK), while the Overton Prize for a young scientist making a significant impact in the field goes to Princeton's Olga Troyanskaya.

    Jul 5, 2011

  • Navigenics Settles Junk DNA Lawsuit with Genetic Technologies

    Herald Sun | "Genetic Technologies has brought another large US company to its knees in a drive to stamp its ownership on a type of DNA testing" is how Melbourne's Herald Sun portrays the news of another patent settlement engineered by the Australian firm, this time with personal genomics company Navigenics.

    Jun 29, 2011

  • Lilly Pledges Millions to Biotech

    Bloomberg | Yesterday Eli Lilly announced plans to make a mulitmillion-dollar investment in its biotech business, but declined to give a specific number.

    Jun 29, 2011

  • Genomics and Risk

    Economist | What do genomics mean for health insurance and equality in health care? Will knowing that you're responsive to a certain drug increase your premiums (you'll live longer, more bills) or decrease them (quicker treatment)?

    Jun 29, 2011

  • Sequencing Devils to Save a Species

    USA Today | Scientists from Penn State and the J. Craig Venter Institute have sequenced the genomes of Cedric and Spirit, a pair of Tasmanian Devils, in the hopes of saving the marsupial species that is threatened with extinction due to the rapid spread of an infectious facial cancer.

    Jun 28, 2011

  • Researchers Cry Foul on Ion Torrent License and Inventors’ Rights

    Bio-IT World |  A pair of former advisors to Ion Torrent Systems, the semiconductor sequencing company acquired by Life Technologies in a deal potentially worth as much as $725 million, are upset about the exclusive licensing deal negotiated with the company by the Stanford University Office of Technology Licensing, which they say is symptomatic of the mistreatment of academic inventors by their employers. One of those researchers, Nader Pourmand, says his first annual royalty check was just $2,300. 

    Jun 27, 2011

  • HHMI, Max Planck Society and Wellcome Trust Plan Open Access Journal

    HHMI News | Three scientific organizations -- the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust -- plan to launch a high-impact, open access journal in 2012. The journal will be edited by "experienced and actively actively practicing" scientists who will avoid asking authors to perform endless additional experiments before a paper can be published. 

     

    Jun 27, 2011

  • 23andMe Reports Novel Parkinson's Disease Gene Associations

    PLoS Genetics | In a report in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics, researchers at 23andMe studying some 3,500 Parkinson's Disease patients report two novel genome-wide associations with the disease and confirm about 20 others.

    Jun 24, 2011

  • Lilly CEO Lobbies for More Green Cards to Boost Pharma

    Bloomberg | The CEO of Eli Lilly, John Lechleiter, says the U.S. Government needs to open its borders and issue more Green Cards to attract and retrain foreign drugmaking research talent. 

    Jun 24, 2011

  • VAAST Potential for New Genome Mutation Hunting Software

    Bio-IT World | Scientists at the University of Utah and a Bay Area software company, Omicia, have released details in two new reports of a powerful computational tool called VAAST for identifying disease-causing mutations by individual genome sequencing.

    Jun 23, 2011

  • There's an iPad App for the Human Genome

    Researchers from the Center for Biomedical Informatics (CBMi) at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia led by Peter White have created a free iPad app called "Genome Wowser," which provides a mobile interface to data from the venerable UC Santa Cruz genome browser. 

    Jun 23, 2011

  • Refer an Software Engineer, Get Your Genome Sequenced

    Bio-IT World | In an effort to recruit dozens of top-notch software engineers, a Bay Area software company, DNAnexus, is offering a unique incentive for successful referrals: $20,000 + your full genome sequence.  

    Jun 23, 2011

  • Japan Rises to Reclaim Top 500 Supercomputing Title

    Asahi Shimbun | Japan has reclaimed the supercomputing crown for the first time in seven years in the latest Top500 supercomputer rankings with the K computer, a machine jointly developed by Fujitsu and the RIKEN research institute. The K computer boasts more than three times the speed of China's second-ranked Tianhe-1A.

    Jun 22, 2011

  • University of Iowa Develops Genetic Diagnostic Test for Hearing Loss

    Bio-IT World | University of Iowa researchers in the Molecular Otolaryngology and Renal Research Labs (MORL) are utilizing GenomeQuest’s clinical decision support system, GQ-Dx, to develop a first-of-its-kind molecular diagnostic test for individuals with hearing loss. GenomeQuest announced the clinical decision-support system for whole-genome diagnostics today. 

    Jun 21, 2011

  • Panasas ActiveStor Storage Goes to 11

    Bio-IT World | Seeing growth opportunities in private clouds, life sciences and next-generation sequencing data management, Panasas had unveiled the latest version of its ActiveStor storage product line at the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany.   

    Jun 20, 2011

  • Everything You Know Is Wrong

    Bio-IT World | I’m new to your neighborhood, a refugee from the telecommunications and semiconductor industries where I spent the last thirty years living under the relentless Darwinian pressure of Moore’s Law: better, faster, cheaper, or die. Examining your world of drug development, medical practice, and health care delivery in what economists euphemistically call a “mixed economy” will be a bit of an Alice-through-the-looking-glass experience. With your forbearance I’d like to ask some questions, and share some wonder and dismay. Maybe we’ll both learn something.

    Jun 20, 2011

  • Whole Genome Sequencing Identifies Key Mutations in Fraternal Twins

    Houston Chronicle | The teenage fraternal twins of LIfe Technologies CIO Joe Beery, both diagnosed with dopa-responsive dystonia, are thriving following the identification of key mutations affecting neurotransmitter production using whole-genome sequencing performed by a team at the Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) genome center, and published in Science Translational Medicine.

    Jun 15, 2011

  • 23andMe Reaches 100,000 Records in DNA Database

    San Jose Mercury News | Consumer genomics company 23andMe has announced that it has built what co-founder Anne Wojcicki calls one of the world's largest DNA databases, with the number of people exceeding 100,000.

    Jun 15, 2011

  • Watching Protein Misfolding with Jaguar

    Oak Ridge National Laboratory | Researchers at North Carolina State University have figured out how copper induces misfolding in teh protein associated with Parkinson's disease, thanks to the Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

    Jun 14, 2011