o More than 200 scientists working on
an ambitious federal project have begun to understand the complicated system of
switches that regulates genes, turning some on and others off, making some glow
brightly while others dim. They hope these discoveries, described in two dozen papers released on Wednesday, will eventually lead to a deeper
understanding of diseases and new ways to treat or cure them.
o ast Friday, in a speech at the White
House, President Obama unveiled what he called his Precision Medicine
Initiative, a two-hundred-and-fifteen-million-dollar plan to collect genetic
information from a million American volunteers in order to further the
development of personalized, genetics-based medical treatments. Obama called
precision medicine “one of the greatest opportunities for new medical
breakthroughs that we have ever seen,” saying that it promised to deliver “the
right treatments at the right time, every time, to the right person.”
DISRUPTION,
REVOLUTION
o Could genetically modified bacteria
escape from a laboratory or fermentation tank and cause disease or ecological
destruction?
This is not known to have occurred.
But two groups of scientists reported on Wednesday that they had developed a
complex technique to prevent it from happening.
TOOLS/TECHNIQUES
o
Imagine
if antibodies were standardized with respect to their sequences, their
concentrations, and their buffers. Antibodies would inspire confidence, not
doubt. And we could stop wasting huge sums on “bad” antibodies. Worldwide, the
losses mount to $800 million each year, roughly half the spending on
protein-binding reagents. In the United States, the corresponding figure
is $350 million.
o I've
been asked about the difference between the Illumina sequencer line-up so many
times that I put together a spreadsheet to help the discussions. This is
cobbled together from the Illumina website and there are no prices quoted,
however I have estimated the £ per M reads and the £ per GB.
HEALTH/MEDECINE
o Transcriptic is a very small
company. We like it that way. A key metric at Transcriptic is leverage:
the employees-to-revenue ratio. We believe that a small, highly effective team
supported by a large automation deployment can rewrite life science economics.
o NextCODE said today it has been
acquired by Shanghai’s WuXi Pharmatech for $65 million in cash. WuXi will merge
NextCODE and its own genome center into a new company called WuXi NextCODE
Genomics that will be headquartered in Shanghai yet have offices in Cambridge,
MA, and Reykjavik, Iceland (
Under
the collaboration, Sigma-Aldrich will provide the Transgenic Module at IMG/CCP
with Sigma CRISPR technology, including reagents, experimental design
consultation and dedicated gene editing bioinformaticians.
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
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