Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Breakthrough of the year on DVD


If you haven't heard the latest Science Magazine podcast (direct link to the RSS feed no subscription) or haven't checked out the Science magazine website recently they have given recognition to the breakthrough of the year (subscription req'd). There is also a video presentation but the link is SO SLOW that I would not bother. Apparently the breakthrough is the sequencing of an individuals genome. I don't see this so much of a breakthrough as an inevitability, however, it certainly has some very important implications. Not only for personalized medicine but also for privacy concerns (subscription req'd). I guess the T-shirt in the picture above from the website is supposed to be covered in annotated genome representing a personal genome? Don't you think it would at least be long sleeved?
Found this tidbit interesting re: privacy concerns:

Baylor and 454 settled on a "data release pathway," McGuire and Egholm say. The company will put the completed genome on a DVD and hand it over to Watson--perhaps, Egholm says, with a small ceremony. Watson will accept responsibility for discussing the risks of its release with his family, decide what should be blocked, and determine how and when to make the sequence public. Watson declines to say more until the company is ready to publish an article--by July, he expects.

Is that in fasta format? What do you think Watson is going to do with that information? Is he going to spend the rest of his life checking it out? Looking for informative SNPs?
What I actually found more interesting was the 'runners-up' for breakthrough of the year (subscription req'd). It's a nice snapshot of some interesting fields of science that I don't regularly keep up with.
The link between memory and imagination I found pretty thought provoking.
I can't even imagine having a good memory.


3 comments:

Rob said...

Kamel just informed me that Sandwalk has already reported on this story. Man, that guy is ON it.

Bayman said...

I guess with Watson's genome we should at least be able to find the gene for discovering the gene.

Anonymous said...

thanks for the cheese bayman!