Weekly Links June 12th,2015

“MUST READ”

• Irwin A. Rose, Nobel-Winning Biochemist, Dies at 88 - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks genomics

• Irwin A. Rose, who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with two collaborators for unraveling the mystery of how cells identify old and damaged proteins and transform them into pieces for new proteins — discoveries that led to the development of a new class of drugs to fight cancer — died on Tuesday in Deerfield, Mass. He was 88.

COMPANIES

• Monsanto Bets $45 Billion on a Pesticide-Soaked Future | Mother Jones

tags: weeklylinks Monsanto

• That rhetoric may have to change, though, if Monsanto succeeds in buying its Swiss rival, pesticide giant Syngenta. On Friday, Syngenta's board rejected a $45 billion takeover bid. But that's hardly the end of the story. Tuesday afternoon, Syngenta's share price was holding steady at a level about 20 percent higher than it was before Monsanto's bid—an indication that investors consider an eventual deal quite possible. As The Wall Street Journal's Helen Thomas put it, the Syngenta board's initial rejection of Monsanto's overture may just be a way of saying, "This deal makes sense, but Syngenta can hold out for more."
• Facebook Opens New AI Research Center In Paris | TechCrunch

tags: weeklylinks

• France has many hidden gems, and Facebook is well-aware of that. The company is building a new artificial intelligence research team in Paris in order to work on ambitious futuristic projects. The new team will work closely with existing Facebook AI Research (FAIR) teams in Menlo Park and New York on image recognition, natural language processing, speech recognition, machine learning, live translating tools and more

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

• Work and Play in Paris's Silicon Sentier - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks paris

• The area of central Paris around rue du Sentier, once home to part of the garment district, is now home to a hive of innovation.
• A decade ago, central Paris around Rue du Sentier — a warren of covered passageways, intimate squares and narrow cobbled streets with names like Cairo, Aboukir and Nile reflecting the area’s development during the Napoleonic campaigns — was an insider destination for cut-rate fashion and accessories in the city’s garment district. Lately, it has morphed into “Silicon Sentier”: a petri dish of entrepreneurial innovation that includes a tech incubator in an old factory as well as a digital arts center and bars where tech workers gather for custom cockta
• Opus 23 – Music for a Gene d'Olivier Calmel: quand le génome humain donne le la | Classicagenda

tags: gene music weeklylinks

Weekly Links June 8th,2015

“MUST READ”

• What Is Your DNA Worth

tags: weeklylinks

• Big Genomics is converting hype to cash at unsettling speed. After the FDA told consumer genomics company 23andMe it could no longer sell people health data, the company began selling that data to drug and biotech companies. An entire industry, potentially fed by almost anyone who draws blood, spit, or biopsies from you, is emerging to do likewise. Its growth, along with the increasingly routine collection of genetic data by hospitals, will feed the genomics bubble while putting private genetic and health information at increased risk.

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

• A Proposal to Modify Plants Gives G.M.O. Debate New Life - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks

• A lot, if the name is genetically modified organism, or G.M.O., which many people are dead set against. But what if scientists used the precise techniques of today’s molecular biology to give back to plants genes that had long ago been bred out of them? And what if that process were called “rewilding?”
• Genetically Engineered Babies. Germ Line Engineering with CRISPR Leads to Designer Human Embryos | MIT Technology Review

tags: CRISPR weeklylinks

• Scientists are developing ways to edit the DNA of tomorrow’s children. Should they stop before it’s too late?

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

• -Amazon, Google race to get your DNA into the cloud | Reuters

tags: dna weeklylinks

• Amazon.com Inc is in a race against Google Inc to store data on human DNA, seeking both bragging rights in helping scientists make new medical discoveries and market share in a business that may be worth $1 billion a year by 2018.

Academic institutions and healthcare companies are picking sides between their cloud computing offerings - Google Genomics or Amazon Web Services - spurring the two to one-up each other as they win high-profile genomics business, according to interviews with researchers, industry consultants and analysts.

• The Man Who Makes Bioinformatics Fun And Accessible For All | Front Line Genomics

tags: bioinformatics weeklylinks

• CoreGenomics: Book Review: Next-Generation DNA Sequencing Informatics 2nd ed.

tags: weeklylinks

• The introductory chapter has a very good history of Sanger sequencing. It discusses the NGS revolution, although I would not personally describe this as "currently under way" more like a pumpkin coloured tidal wave has washed over the world, and we're all waiting to see what happens next! The main technologies are explained in some detail, and the reviews are pretty much bang up to date. However 454 appears to be alive and kicking in this introduction - perhaps my bias as an Illumina user

HEALTH/MEDECINE

• New Class of Drugs Shows More Promise in Treating Cancer - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks

• A new drug that unleashes the body’s immune system to attack tumors can prolong the lives of people with the most common form of lung cancer, doctors reported on Friday, the latest example of the significant results being achieved by this new class of medicines.

In a separate study, researchers said they had found that a particular genetic signature in the tumor can help predict which patients could benefit from the immune-boosting drugs.

• Love Me Love Me Not — The Life Science Industry’s Paradox

COMPANIES

• Merck Millipore Buys Rights to Singulex Protein Detection Tech | GEN News Highlights | GEN

tags: weeklylinks

• Merck Millipore, the life sciences business of Merck KGaA, has acquired exclusive worldwide rights allowing it to control and manage the Singulex Life Science Research business, including its Single Molecule Counting (SMC™) technology—including instruments, assays, and services, the companies said today.
• Through the deal, Merck Millipore aims to advance SMC as a leading standard for protein detection by combining its global reach with Singulex’s Erenna® immunoassay platform.
• What Genentech's new Building 35 says about the biotech industry's big Bay Area economic impact - San Francisco Business Times

tags: weeklylinks

• Genentech plans to make more than $2 billion in capital investments through 2016 in California, including lab expansions in South San Francisco and its manufacturing plants in Vacaville and Oceanside. It is building an "employee resource center," including a fitness center, and plans to construct a second child care center to hold another 500 children.
• Any Given Cell: Can Biotech Pioneer Steve Fodor Do it Again? | Xconomy

tags: weeklylinks

• About Us - Complete GenomicsComplete Genomics -
• Complete Genomics is a leader in whole human genome sequencing based in Mountain View, California. Using its proprietary sequencing instruments, chemistry, and software, the company has sequenced more than 20,000 whole human genomes over the past five years. The company’s mission is to improve human health by providing researchers and clinicians with the core technology and commercial systems to understand, prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases and conditions.
• Revolocity - Complete GenomicsComplete Genomics -

tags: weeklylinks genomics

o    The Revolocity^™ system is a complete solution for large-scale, high-quality whole genome sequencing (WGS) and whole exome sequencing (WES). 

• Designed to sequence 10,000 WGS per year and expand to 30,000 WGS per year—surpassing the scalability of any other sequencing solution available today.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

• Infidelity Lurks in Your Genes - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks

• We have long known that men have a genetic, evolutionary impulse to cheat, because that increases the odds of having more of their offspring in the world.

But now there is intriguing new research showing that some women, too, are biologically inclined to wander, although not for clear evolutionary benefits.

• The Optogenetics Breakthrough - The New Yorker

tags: weeklylinks

Weekly Links May 22th ,2015

“MUST READ”

• Front Line Genomics Magazine – Issue Three | Front Line Genomics
  Front Line Genomics Magazine The May/June issue of the Magazine is hot off the digital press. We get up close and personal with genome editing; talk ‘N of 1’ studies with Elaine Mardis; try to give Keith Bradnam his own ‘101 Questions’ experience; and find out what AZ’s Brian Dougherty has been working on ahead of his presentation at next month’s Festival of Genomics. And that’s just the interviews!
  tags: weeklylinks
  
  
• The Mind of Marc Andreessen - The New Yorker

tags: weeklylinks

•      At his firm, Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capitalist routinely lays out “what will happen in the next ten, twenty, thirty years.”

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

• Francis Collins on CRISPR: "Designer babies make great Hollywood — and bad science" - Vox

tags: weeklylinks

• Two years ago, scientists quietly developed a technique known as CRISPR/Cas, which allowed them to edit DNA more cheaply, more quickly, and more precisely than ever before. At the time, few people were paying attention.

Now, however, lots of people are talking about CRISPR — particularly after a group of researchers in China recently used the technique to edit nonviable human embryos. Though the embryos would never turn into humans, this was the first time anyone had ever tried to edit the genetic material of homo sapiens, and the April 18 publication of the results sparked a massive outcry.

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

• U.S. Introduces New DNA Standard for Ensuring Accuracy of Genetic Tests - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks

• The federal government opened the door to a new era of genetic medicine on Thursday by introducing a standard way to ensure the accuracy of DNA tests used to tailor treatments for individual patients.
• Behind the Bench: Sanger Sequencing by CE 4: Bi...

tags: weeklylinks

• Part four of a six-part series, here’s an overview of how data is converted by a capillary sequencing instrument from an analog signal to a digital one, assigned a base call (or fragment length) with a quality metric, and lastly variant reporting.

HEALTH/MEDECINE

• Genetically Modify Your Own Frankenbugs, No Lab Necessary | TechCrunch

tags: weeklylinks

• Arcturus BioCloud is a biotechnology startup on the outskirts of San Francisco that hopes to give science hobbyists the ability to gene splice their way to super bacteria with a few clicks on their laptop.

“You don’t need a lab,” co-founder Jaime Sotomayor said of the Arcturus platform. That’s because his team has created a lab in the cloud that will do the work for you with a combination of robotics, artificially intelligent software, and synthetic biology.

COMPANIES

• VWR (VWR), the Lab Equipment Maker, Shows Its Hand in Dealmaking After IPO - TheStreet

tags: weeklylinks

• Since going public in October, VWR has been active as an acquirer, rolling up smaller players in the industry. 

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

• Five Productivity Lies We Tell Ourselves | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

tags: productivity weeklylinks

• We all want to work smarter—that’s why productivity is such a hot topic—but are we getting ahead or just spinning our wheels? Tracey Foulkes, CEO of Get Organised South Africa, says too many of us are in the "busy business of busyness." 

"We’re always rushing from meeting to meeting and drowning in work," she says. "It’s not about doing more; it’s about making wiser choices."

• People think they’re adding value, but if they aren’t doing what they need to do, in reality they’re not. You’re only valuable to your organization when you are doing what you’re hired to do."
• The Last Day of Her Life - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks

• Sandy Bem, a Cornell psychology professor one month shy of her 65th birthday, was alone in her bedroom one night in May 2009, watching an HBO documentary called “The Alzheimer’s Project.” For two years, she had been experiencing what she called “cognitive oddities”: forgetting the names of things or confusing words that sounded similar. She once complained about a “blizzard” on her foot, when she meant a blister; she brought home a bag of plums and, standing in her kitchen, pulled one out and said to a friend: “Is this a plum? I can’t quite seem to fully know.”