Talk

Welcome to another edition of Gene Genie. With Craig Venter and 23andMe and decodeME all over the news, I thought this edition might be appropriately focused on genes and “me.” What does the gene genie have to say about us?

The Basics

Since so many readers of my blog are not scientists, medical professionals, or genetics geeks, let’s start with “It’s All in your Genes, Part 1” a video of Bill Nye the Science Guy courtesy of Grrl Scientist. Science teachers, raise your hand: How many of you will be showing this to your classes on National DNA Day?

What Genomics Means to You and Me

That’s the 24-hour question, isn’t it? As always, Hsien manages to provide useful, interesting info for the curious as well as the scientist, with tongue still planted firmly in cheek: DNA Testing Can Ruin Your Life Forever.

Over at Scienceroll, Berci created a Demo Account at 23andMe. He kindly walks us through the demo genes of the fictitious Mendel family and gives us all a closer perspective on the 23andMe genome-wide array test and services.

The Genetic Genealogist answers the question we hear most often from people who have had ancestry and admixture testing: I Have My Ancestry Testing Results, Now What?

Genomeboy is finding out first-hand what his DNA means to him. He’s one of the first two PGP’ers to received his genome sequence. In Waiting on a friend…or eight he ruminates on what it means to have and go public with this personal info, “I do think for my first time out of the box, I would prefer to go through the process in a slightly more mediated, hand-holding way, which I am hopeful the PGP and perhaps a commercial service will provide.” Misha, is boldly going where (few) have gone before. I’m curious what others would do in his shoes.

Recent Gene Discoveries

How can we tell when “discoveries” are really discoveries, not manufactured news or the first step in research?

Genetic Future breaks down the research behind new genes for celiac disease, “It’s clear from this study just how far we still have to go to define the genetic basis of complex conditions like celiac disease. Simply adding more and more numbers to these traditional types of association studies is likely to have diminishing returns - much of the heritable risk comes from areas that simply aren’t explored by standard genome-scan approaches.” As a side note, current HLA genetic testing can only rule out celiac disease . To diagnose celiac disease, genetic test results must be considered in combination with blood and/or tissue test results. For those with celiac disease, Anthony at Joyful Digesting has Promising News for Celiac Sufferers about Lactaid-type drugs in the works.

Hayden at It’s Alive, who lives in a hope for a cure to baldness, approached recent research in Nature Genetics on hair growth disorders with “an air of optimistic hope.”

The forum for Improving Drug Safety reports on literature that identifies an “ultra-metabolizer” status for the drug metabolizing gene CYP 2C19. CYP 2C19 is involved in the metabolism of common medications, including anti-reflux drugs Prilosec, Prevacid and Protonix.

David Hamilton presents Science by press release — PrimeGen’s murky stem-cell “breakthrough” at VentureBeat LifeScience. He takes a critical look at the stem-cell company, which claims to have bettered the gene-therapy experiments that yielded induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells — but without ever publishing any data or presenting at a reputable scientific conference.

Yann Klimentidis comments on a recent meta-analysis in the American Journal of Human Genetics on nutrigenomics studies and companies that sell nutrigenomics tests and nutritional products.

What Are We Learning?

How we react to the exploding science of genomics perhaps tells us as much about ourselves as our genetics. Gene Expression has an interesting exploration into how concepts of race ompare with actual genetic admixtures: Genetics, the myth-buster? The case of Argentina. Every few months, it seems similar issues circulate in the mainstream media.

How Are We Learning?

I love mash-ups, and Rick at My Biotech Life highlights a wonderful new tool: the Genome Projector, a zoomable user interface for molecular biology. Now if someone can just turn this into a “My Genome Projector” for Genomeboy and his 9 friends….

The next Gene Genie will be hosted March 30 at Greg Laden’s Blog. Thanks as always to Berci, the energetic founder of the carnival and Rick, logo-designer extraordinaire.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.