I’m shocked. Just totally surprised. And it was unanimous — the Supreme Court determined that human genes cannot be patented. This is excellent news. Why is it a good decision? Because medical DNA analysis was turning into a patchwork of competing landgrabs. Sequencing technology is coming along so nicely that more and more diagnostic tools …
Category Archive: Molecular biology
Mar 23 2013
We need a sociologist of science…or a philosopher
There’s another paper out debunking the ENCODE consortium’s absurd interpretation of their data. ENCODE, you may recall, published a rather controversial paper in which they claimed to have found that 80% of the human genome was ‘functional’ — for an extraordinarily loose definition of function — and further revealed that several of the project leaders …
Feb 22 2013
ENCODE gets a public reaming
I rarely laugh out loud when reading science papers, but sometimes one comes along that triggers the response automatically. Although, in this case, it wasn’t so much a belly laugh as an evil chortle, and an occasional grim snicker. Dan Graur and his colleagues have written a rebuttal to the claims of the ENCODE research …
Feb 05 2013
Give that fish a hand!
I have a bit of a peeve with a common analogy for the human genome: that it is the blueprint of the body, and that we can find a mapping of genes to details of our morphological organization. It’s annoying because even respectable institutions, like the National Human Genome Research Institute, use it as a …
Jan 28 2013
What I taught today: gene regulation and signaling
My students are also blogging here: My undergrad encounters Developmental Biology Miles’ Devo Blog Tavis Grorud’s Blog for Developmental Biology Thang’s Blog Heidi’s blog for Developmental Biology Chelsae blog Stacy’s Strange World of Developmental Biology Thoughts of Developmental Biology Biology~ Today was more context and a bit of a caution for my developmental biology course. …
Jan 21 2013
Should we resurrect the Neandertals?
I was reading an interview with George Church, who was discussing that very same question, and somehow I had to rethink some things. There was the question of technical feasibility, and Church thinks it’s going to be entirely possible in the near future. The first thing you have to do is to sequence the Neanderthal …
Dec 03 2012
This is not a photo of a single strand of DNA
Researchers have taken a photo of a DNA strand, which is kind of cool, but also confused me a bit. Here it is: Wait. The link says that this photo reveals the familiar “spiralling corkscrew” of the DNA double helix, but that can’t be right. The familiar B-DNA form has a diameter of 2nm and …
Nov 20 2012
Aaargh! Physicists! Again!
A while back, two physicists, Paul Davies and Charles Lineweaver, announced their explanation for cancer with a novel theory, which is theirs, that cancers are atavisms recapitulating in a Haeckelian reverse double backflip their premetazoan ancestry. They seemed very proud of their idea. I was aghast, as you might guess. They even claimed that human …
Nov 18 2012
Fire up iTunes now!
In about 20 minutes, Atheist Talk radio will be interviewing George Church, the molecular geneticist who has been working to make genetic sequencing affordable, and preparing us for the day high school students are building designer organisms in their garage. Listen to it, or be unprepared for the sneaky stuff the kids will be up …
Oct 29 2012
The CephSeq Consortium has a strategy
I approve this plan. A number of researchers have gotten together and worked out a grand strategy for sequencing the genomes of a collection of cephalopods. This involves surveying the phylogeny of cephalopods and trying to pick species to sample that adequately cover the diversity of the group, while also selecting model species that have …
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