Daily Archives: February 19, 2013

My Genome Has Been Sequenced, And I #39;m Headed To Abu Dhabi!
See, I AM a secret Arab! Just kidding. No I #39;m not. Let me know if you live in the UAE, though! I #39; staying in Abu Dhabi, but will likely visit Dubai over the weekend. So yeah, You Finns have found me, and I #39;ve found YOU, you wily Finns. Now eventually I #39;ll have to find the rest of my relatives. Well, not all of them. It doesn #39;t really matter to my life, but it #39;s fun and educational to figure out how your ancestors lived and explore the world genetically. Ancestry finder results: 100% European which breaks down to: 99.1% Northern European, .5% nonspecific European, .4% Southern European The Northern European breaks down to: 35.1% "Nonspecific" Northern European (probably would end up breaking down mostly into the others listed below, especially the British part) 25.4% Scandinavian 18.3% Finnish 14.2% French and German 6.1% British or Irish BlogTV: http://www.blogtv.com Twitter: twitter.com FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com PlayStation Network: Zaunstar PlanetSide 2: Waterson server, New Conglomerate faction, Zaunstar Outro royalty-free music license info: creativecommons.org Song URL for Dvorak Polka: incompetech.com Artist: Kevin MacLeod

By: Zaunstar

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My Genome Has Been Sequenced, And I'm Headed To Abu Dhabi! - Video

YAHOO: By Tarra Quismundo in Manila/Philippine Daily Inquirer | Asia News Network

It is a question that has been asked for generations: "Who is the Filipino?"

A Filipino-American scientist and global genomics expert believes the answer is in every one of us, literally. Michael Purugganan, a world authority on the molecular study of the origin, evolution and characteristics of organisms, is calling on the government, private sector and Filipino scientists to embark on the Philippines' own genome project-an undertaking that would determine where the Filipino comes from.

"One of the things that I've always advocated is a systematic analysis of the genome of Filipinos... It's still really basic research but I think it has practical values. It allows us to see, for example, what genetic diseases we might have, which might help doctors," Purugganan told the Inquirer on Jan. 30.

"Just as important is that it allows us to see who we are, to tell the story of who we are. That's a very powerful idea, that we as Filipinos can go to our DNA and see who we are and what makes us different," said the dean of science at New York University (NYU) while on a visit to Manila.

Purugganan, who works closely on rice genome studies with the Laguna-based International Rice Research Institute, proposed to look into the DNA of a representative group of 10 Filipinos from different provinces and tribal groups, and sequence their genome, the entirety of an organism's genetic makeup.

The project would ultimately answer the question that one local apparel brand posed through billboard ads last year: "What's your mix?"

"I remember somebody asking me that and I had to think about it. I said, 'I actually don't know what being a Filipino means genetically.' So, genetically we're mixtures of Taiwanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Indian, Arab, Spanish, probably some American and British. It's just different degrees," Purugganan said.

This is not to say, however, that no one is native Filipino, said Purugganan, who became the features editor of the Collegian in the early 1980s and finished a chemistry degree at the University of the Philippines (UP), before taking up advanced studies in top universities in the United States.

Most everyone, after all, is born with a mix of bloodlines from different parts of the world, given the long history of human migration, settlement and, in the case of the Philippines, colonisation.

Excerpt from:
The Philippine Genome Project --- Who is the Filipino?

A new company offers a gene vault for doctors who want to add genomics to patient care.

Genomic sequencing might be more common in medicine if doctors had a simple way to send for the test and keep track of the data.

Thats the hope of Coriell Life Sciences in Camden, New Jersey, a startup that grew out of a partnership between the Coriell Institute for Medical Research and IBM. The company wants to facilitate the process of ordering, storing, and interpreting whole-genome-sequence data for doctors. The company launched in January and is now working with different health-care providers to set up its service. The intent is that the doctor would order a test like any other diagnostic test they order today, says Scott Megill, president of Coriell Life Sciences. The company would facilitate sequencing the patients DNA (through existing sequencing companies such as Illumina or Ion Torrent), store it in its so-called gene vault, and act as the middleman between doctors and companies that offer interpretation services. Finally, we will return the genetic result in the human readable form back to the electronic medical record so the doctor can read it and interpret it for the patient, says Megill.

You need a robust software infrastructure for storing, analyzing, and presenting information, says Jon Hirsch, who founded Syapse, a California-based company developing software to analyze biological data sets for diagnosing patients. Until that gets built, you can generate all the data you want, but its not going to have any impact outside the few major centers of genomics medicine, he says.

The company will use a board of scientific advisors to guide them to the best interpretation programs available. No one company is in position to interpret the entire genome for its meaning, says Michael Christman, CEO of the Coriell Institute for Medical Research. But by having ones sequence in the gene vault, then the physician will be able to order interpretative engines, analogous to apps for the iPhone, he says. Doctors could order an app to analyze a patients genome for DNA variants linked to poor drug response at one point, and later on, order another for variants linked to heart disease.

The cloud-based workflow could help doctors in different locations take advantage of expert interpretations anywhere, says Christman. This would allow a doctor whos at a community clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma, order an interpretation of breast cancer sequences derived at Sloan Kettering, he says.

But while the cloud offers many conveniences, it carries some potential risks. I am a bit concerned if we really start to outsource data to the cloud without any regulation, says Emiliano De Cristofaro, a cryptography scientist with Xeroxs PARC who is developing a genomic data storage and sharing platform. We must not forget that the sensitivity of genomic information is quite unprecedented, he says. The human genome is not only a unique identifier but also contains things about ethnic heritage, predisposition to certain diseases including mental disorders, and many other traits. Data leaks happen all the time, says Cristofaro, and while you can change your password after a security break, theres no way to revoke your genome.

Keeping the genomic data secure is a key component and is the reason the group began a relationship with IBM, says Megill. The data would be stored at the companys headquarters and would be available only to limited usersdoctors and companies that offer diagnostic or other medical interpretation of the genome, he says.

If a patient changes her health-care provider, the data will remain available for her next physician. Storing the data will be free, says Christman.

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The Bank Where Doctors Can Stash Your Genome