• Japan Rises to Reclaim Top 500 Supercomputing Title

    Jun 22, 2011, 11:10 AM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • University of Iowa Develops Genetic Diagnostic Test for Hearing Loss

    Jun 21, 2011, 14:40 PM by Michael Croft
    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. 
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  • Panasas ActiveStor Storage Goes to 11

    Jun 20, 2011, 13:55 PM by Michael Croft
    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.   
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  • Everything You Know Is Wrong

    Jun 20, 2011, 11:05 AM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • Whole Genome Sequencing Identifies Key Mutations in Fraternal Twins

    Jun 15, 2011, 16:35 PM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • 23andMe Reaches 100,000 Records in DNA Database

    Jun 15, 2011, 09:40 AM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • Watching Protein Misfolding with Jaguar

    Jun 14, 2011, 10:25 AM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • IntraLinks Survey Highlights Need for e-Clinical Document Exchange Tools

    Jun 14, 2011, 09:35 AM by Michael Croft

    Bio-IT World | One week ahead of the annual Drug Information Association (DIA) conference, a new survey conducted on behalf of IntraLinks by CenterWatch, reveals a dearth of use in web-based tools for clinical document exchange. 

     

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  • Genome Scan Predicts Splicing Mutations

    Jun 13, 2011, 15:00 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | According to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, nearly one third of the mutations listed in the Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD) may be caused by splicing errors in mRNA. “Splicing mutations are already known to be a large fraction, but we’re saying they are even more,” said William Fairbrother, assistant professor of biology at Brown University and senior author of the study. 
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  • Illumina Halves Sequence Costs, Launches iPad App

    Jun 10, 2011, 00:05 AM by Michael Croft

    Bio-IT World | Confirming hunches in the industry, Jay Flatley annouced another price drop in Illumina's Individual Genome Sequencing (IGS) service. At the Consumer Genetics Show in Boston, the Illumina president and CEO knocked $10,000 from the price of individual genome sequencing, bringing the service to $9,500.   

     

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  • Decision Support in High Definition

    Jun 10, 2011, 00:00 AM by Michael Croft

    Bio-IT World | A high-definition touch screen that fosters collaboration by enabling drug developers to manipulate molecules, much like Tom Cruise sifting through a crime scene in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, was the high point of Bryn Roberts’ keynote on novel decision support technologies at the 2011 Bio-IT World Conference.

     

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  • The Search for Answers

    Jun 8, 2011, 02:20 AM by Michael Croft

    Stephen Wolfram computes answers to never before asked questions. By Kevin Davies June 8, 2011 | “Wolfram|Alpha knows about lots of things,” said its creator, the British mathematical prodigy Stephen Wolfram, CEO of Wolfram Research and author of A New

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  • Oncologists Consider Genomic Treatments

    Jun 6, 2011, 01:50 AM by Michael Croft
    Wall Street Journal | Over the weekend at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, researchers discussed using genomics to match drugs to the biological drivers of tumors in patients.
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  • Jackson Lab Shelves Florida Personalized Medicine Institute

    Jun 3, 2011, 16:05 PM by Michael Croft
    Sarasota Herald Tribune | The famous Jackson Laboratory in Maine is pulling out of a planned venture to build a personalized medicine institute in Sarasota County, Florida.  
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  • Rothberg's Ion Torrent Decodes 'Frankenstein Bacteria'

    Jun 3, 2011, 15:45 PM by Michael Croft
    Hartford Courant | "It really is a Frankenstein bacteria," says Jonathan Rothberg, founder of Ion Torrent, the Connecticut next-generation sequencing company that has decoded the hybrid E.coli bacterium that has caused fatalities in Germany.
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  • German Teams, BGI and Life Technologies Identify Deadly European E.coli Strain

    Jun 2, 2011, 08:05 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Two teams of German researchers, one collaborating with BGI-Shenzhen in China, the other with LIfe Technologies, have identified some of the key genes responsible for the unusual toxicity and resistance of this hybrid strain, which has already claimed 17 lives in Germany.  
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  • Biogen Idec's Next Steps

    May 31, 2011, 00:40 AM by Michael Croft
    Boston Globe | Since George Scangos took the lead at Biogen Idec, he has cut 13% of the company's gobal workforce, dumped more than a dozen drug development projects, and halted the company's move from Cambridge to Weston, Mass.
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  • RNA Editing Paper Draws Computational Criticism

    May 26, 2011, 01:40 AM by Michael Croft
    Nature | Computational biologists are pointing out flaws in the observations of authors of a Science paper published last week that claimed that RNA editing changes bases after transcription.
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  • The Most Innovative Countries--Who's On Top?

    May 26, 2011, 01:30 AM by Michael Croft
    Forbes | In 2009, Chinese researchers published more IT papers than US researchers--the first time China has passed the US. However in Biology and Medicine, the US still published far more papers than any other country, likely due to big pharma's presense and the clinical trial infrastructure.
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  • RNA Editing Much More Widespread than Imagined

    May 20, 2011, 02:50 AM by Michael Croft
    Nature | Results published in Science yesterday suggest that the DNA-RNA-protein workflow that forms the basis of biology may not be as straightforward as we thought.
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