The Race to Read Genomes on a Shoestring, Relatively Speaking
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If the cost of sequencing a human genome can drop to $1,000 or below, experts say it would start to become feasible to tell what diseases people might be at risk for.
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Researchers create three-dimensional structures using DNA-directed assembly.
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At the last day of the Web 2.0 Summit, attendees learned that having their genome mapped will set them back $300,000 and that&#160;Google&#39;s founders really stress over the prevention and extermination of evil.During a panel of former Google employees, they confirmed to moderator and conference chair John Battelle that, yes, Larry Page and Sergey Brin do factor heavily into business and technology decisions whether they will have evil consequences.WeatherBill CEO David Friedberg belonged to Google&#39;s Corporate Development team and, when negotiating acquisitions, it wasn&#39;t unheard of for either Page or Brin to ask hard questions about the deals if they sensed that the members of companies&#39; management teams had an evil streak, he said.Meanwhile, entrepreneur Bret Taylor, who developed products at Google for four years, said Page and Brin were excellent at steering product teams to think big while reminding them always keep in mind the question of evil.Earlier in the day, genetics maverick J. Craig Venter informed attendees that mapping a person&#39;s genome these days costs about $300,000, but that, as happened with calculators, the price will tumble over time. For instance, if you can wait a couple of years, the cost will probably be closer to $100,000. That&#39;s a bargain compared with the about $70 million that it cost to map Venter&#39;s genome.Venter&#39;s genome is posted on the Internet. He joked that there might come a day when singles on the dating scene will be able to do a Google search for potential mates&#39; genomes, especially if they might at some point consider becoming fruitful and multiplying.The son of a man who died of cardiac arrest at age 59 and of a woman who is still playing golf at 85, Venter has identified genes in his map both for heart disease and longevity. However, he estimates that scientists will need a critical mass of 10,000 human genomes in order to engage in the type of analysis that will lead to major, unequivocal insights about genetic traits.And in a rare display of corporate affection, representatives from Internet archrivals Google and Microsoft sat beside each other at a panel on online maps and exchanged pleasantries.The slightly surreal moment came about halfway through the a panel titled &quot;Edge: Mapping.&quot; Brian McClendon, engineering director and product manager of Google Earth, commended his Microsoft peer Erik Jorgensen, general manager of Live Search, for Microsoft&#39;s support of&#160;Google&#39;s Keyhole Markup Language (KML).KML is the language used to create data files for both Google Maps and its sister desktop application Google Earth. On Monday, Microsoft announced that its&#160;Live Search&#160;engine&#39;s local search component has gained support for KML, giving it access to the wealth of mapping data created with KML and available on the Web.Microsoft and Google can &quot;duke it out&quot; for customer acquisition, but &quot;the fight shouldn&#39;t be on file formats, so cooperating on this makes all the sense in the world,&quot; Jorgensen said during the mini lovefest.
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A powerful new strategy promises to speed up the effort to link genes to specific diseases. Can you say 'transcriptome'?
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Evolutionary biologists have long theorized that the pace of evolution quickens when a species faces great environmental stress. This idea, of course, is a tough one to âprove,â but we can see examples of it all around us. Just look at the IT security industry, where something akin to drastic environmental change is happening right now: Organized cybercrime groups are punching truck-size holes in enterprise security defenses as regulators, shareholders, and attorneys general are putting pressure on companies to lock down sensitive data. The pressure for change will make this weekâs RSA Security Conference in San Francisco less an industry shindig than a live experiment in evolutionary biology. So walk quietly and keep your field glasses handy to spot some exotic new species in these areas:
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Publications fulfils US' Human Genome commitment
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It's not exactly light reading, but there's plenty of good news in a report from the National Academy of Engineering. It's a list of the "Grand Challenges" in engineering this century compiled by an array of experts like the genetics researcher J. Craig Ventner and Google's Larry Page. What's encouraging isn't so much the list [...].
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The full genome of James D. Watson has been deciphered, marking what some scientists believe is the gateway to an era of personalized genomic medicine.
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Scientists have analyzed the genetic makeup of chickens, and it is providing valuable information about how human genes work. Washington University Genome Sequencing Center led a group of international researchers
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Researchers have transformed one bacterial species into another by swapping their genomes, a move that will accelerate the race to develop custom-built synthetic bugs, a pioneer on genetics has said.
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The first synthetic genome is pieced together by scientists, the next-to-last step in creating man-made life.
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Scientists comparing the DNA sequence of brain genes in several species of primate have found that the genes that specify the architecture of the human brain seem to have started evolving faster some 20 million years ago.
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While bigger competitors stumble over each other, Bio-Reference keeps growing.
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Open-source developers attempting to reverse-engineer the mysteries of private networking software turn to genomics research. They're applying algorithms developed by biologists to decipher the secrets of closed networks. By Danny O'Brien.
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A new way to use DNA sequencers could be the biggest thing to hit science since the microscope.
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German scientists are using a new computational method to analyze DNA taken from microorganisms that make up more than a third of the Earth's biomass.
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Scientists release a first draft of the bovine genome - a run through of the genetic code that describes a cow.