Genomics' X prize

the $10 million prize for 10 genomes in 10 days for $10,000 .... getting close to a winner, but the question is the QC judging...

Emily & Andrew's Baringo work highlight of SVP

Nice little Ann Gibbons plug in Science NewsFocus.

genotyping CNVs

new approaching using short reads (another useful tangent from the 1000 genomes project)

Science special issue on epigenetics

already flagged by Tim, but worth also linking to the ToC of this science issue -- perhaps articles on small RNAs and prions of later interest...

Gene patents ...perhaps no more

This will be a good debate topic for ANTH204

"Friday the U.S. Department of Justice issued a brief saying that the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 should never have been patented."

1000 Genomes Project

The first major paper from the project was published last week in Nature.

So now we supposed have 94% of human variable sites documented -- including the identification of many 'rare variants'.

An interest snippet from the Nature News article:

"results of the survey revealed, with each person's genome carrying some 250 or 300 so-called 'loss-of-function' mutations that incapacitate the gene in which they occur.

"That's quite a lot — it's on the order of 1% of all genes," says Richard Durbin, a genomicist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, and one of the chief architects of the project."

Plague Origins & Epidemiology Across China, Europe, and Africa

Interesting review of the distribution of plague strains across the west, with their origins - "'The likely origin of the plague in China has nothing to do with its people or crowded cities,' Dr. Achtman said. 'The bacterium has no interest in people, whom it slaughters by accident. Its natural hosts are various species of rodent such as marmots and voles, which are found throughout China.'"