• CLC bio Expands Software Trial for Mini Next-Gen Sequencers

    Jul 7, 2011, 06:45 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Anticipating a flood of new customers for three dynamic new bench top next-gen sequencing instruments, Danish software company CLC bio is extending the trial period for its flagship NGS software product to six months.   
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  • BGI Announces Cloud Genome Assembly Service

    Jul 6, 2011, 19:10 PM by Michael Croft

    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. 

     

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  • Ashburner, Troyanskaya Win ISCB Computational Biology Awards

    Jul 5, 2011, 16:00 PM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • Navigenics Settles Junk DNA Lawsuit with Genetic Technologies

    Jun 29, 2011, 08:55 AM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • Genomics and Risk

    Jun 29, 2011, 05:00 AM by Michael Croft
    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)?
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  • Lilly Pledges Millions to Biotech

    Jun 29, 2011, 05:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Bloomberg | Yesterday Eli Lilly announced plans to make a mulitmillion-dollar investment in its biotech business, but declined to give a specific number.
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  • Sequencing Devils to Save a Species

    Jun 28, 2011, 12:10 PM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • Researchers Cry Foul on Ion Torrent License and Inventors’ Rights

    Jun 27, 2011, 13:25 PM by Michael Croft
    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. 
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  • HHMI, Max Planck Society and Wellcome Trust Plan Open Access Journal

    Jun 27, 2011, 08:55 AM by Michael Croft

    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. 

     

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  • 23andMe Reports Novel Parkinson's Disease Gene Associations

    Jun 24, 2011, 11:40 AM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • Lilly CEO Lobbies for More Green Cards to Boost Pharma

    Jun 24, 2011, 10:25 AM by Michael Croft
    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. 
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  • VAAST Potential for New Genome Mutation Hunting Software

    Jun 23, 2011, 11:15 AM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • There's an iPad App for the Human Genome

    Jun 23, 2011, 09:00 AM by Michael Croft
    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. 
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  • Refer an Software Engineer, Get Your Genome Sequenced

    Jun 23, 2011, 07:25 AM by Michael Croft
    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.  
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  • 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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