Cost of sequencing a genome

Hi classmates,

I did a little bit of surfing and found that it will cost $2.2 Million to sequence my genome. (That's in US dollars too.)

Here's where I found it. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8828404/ Think I'll ask for something cheaper for my birthday this year, but next year maybe....

Ingrid

Mum's can thank their children for their brains

In class, I mentioned stem cells from the fetus colonising the mother. A new report mentions that stem cells from the fetus can cross the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier normally prevents foreign molecules from freely interacting with brain cells, so it is a bit of a surprise that intact cells make it to the brain. It remains to be demonstrated, but an hypothesis is that the fetal brain cells help to rejuvinate the mother's brain thereby enhancing the Mother's chance of survival. Forget altruism. A healthy Mum is a fetus' way of ensuring its own survival.

virtual reconstruction of life

In my last post I pointed out a significant step forward in developing the mouse as a much more effective mammalian model organism. Progress in E. coli gives us an idea of where this is heading.

Not only have all E. coli genes been mutated for several years, but these mutant strains are under detailed investigation to discover the function of every gene. The next goal is to use this information in an attempt to reconstrruct a virtual living organism. This provides a detailed predictive model against which the results of experiments can be compared to identify flaws in our understanding of how a living organism functions. E. coli has been chosen because it is a simple organism, but it is obvious that the same poal will eventually be applied to the understanding of human biology. This modeling will require biologists with skills in maths and computing.

More detailed information can be found here.

Major development in mammalian genetics

Imagine a model mammalian organism for which any gene mutation could be accessed at will and studied in any cell type or in a whole organism. This possibility just came one step closer to reality. A project has been launched to mutate each gene in the mouse genome in embryonic stem cells. Each cell line would contain one distinct mutation. Because the mutations will be in embryonic stem cells, they can potentially be induced to form an intact mouse or a variety of mouse tissue types.

This research approach has already been pioneered to great effect in other eukaryotic models including Saccharomyces (yeast), C. elegans (nematode), Drosophila (fruit fly), Arabidopsis (plant) and zebrafish. The extension of this to mice enhances the genetic tools available to all mouse labs and research projects around the world and makes interesting large scale genetics projects possible.

What cost youthfulness??

There seems to be an emerging trend that there is a cost to some genes that confer youthfulness/longevity. The cost is an increased risk of cancer.

If you stop to think about it, cancer cells can divide indefinitely. Thus, they act more like young cells than like old cells. As a result, a "youthful" cell may threaten the longevity of an organism. a key challenge of ageing research will be to find mechanisms for enhanced health and survival of organisms that keep cells under control.

trial postings

Dear BIOC6006 students,

I am expecting that you will be attempting to submit trial posts to the class blog. Please give this a try or let me know if there is a problem. Thanks.

Paul

Interesting summary of animal cloning

With the announcement today of the successful cloning of a dog, I thought it would be useful to share a summary of successfully cloned animals. I was not aware of the complete list which includes cats, goats, cows, mice, pigs, rabbits, horses, deer, mules and gaur.

Faster DNA sequencing

A new report from the journal Scientific American, indicates that miniaturisation can greatly enhance the speed of DNA sequencing. For example, a bacterial genome sequence was determined in an afternoon on a single sequencing machine.

Scientific American: DNA Sequencing Speeds Up