J. Craig Venter and Personal Genetics
Wow, what a day for personal genetics. Yesterday, J. Craig Venter’s diploid genome was released (I’m not sure where the sequence is, but the paper is available at PLoS Biology, a OPEN ACCESS journal!).
I know that many people have their gripe about Venter, but seeing a story about personal genetics on the front page of CNN is important. It educates people and helps alleviate fears about genomic sequencing. I think it’s a great opportunity for the field. Here’s a few quotes from the CNN story:
“Venter has just published almost all 6 billion letters, or 96 percent, of his own personal genetic code in the journal PLoS Biology. From diseases to personality traits, it’s the most comprehensive human genome to date. Venter’s gene map provides a new understanding of his genetic destiny, according to the DNA inherited from both his father and his mother.
Venter says it’s just the beginning of a new era of personal genomics. “For the first time, we can answer almost any question of what’s genetic, what’s the environment. Our genes can tell us probabilities of what might happen and give us a chance to do something about it.”
There are also some quotes from George Church, leader of the Personal Genome Project:
“Dr. George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, is working on a DNA test that would identify for the consumer 1 percent of his or her DNA at a cost of $1,000. He says that someday soon, people may be checking their DNA maps as they do their stock portfolios — constantly adjusting to everyday developments and new gene discoveries.
“You’ll have all that information sitting at your desk and as the information flows in you’ll say, ‘I only want to know things of certain type. I don’t want to know about Alzheimer’s, or I don’t want to know about heart disease, or I do, or I want to know about everything, as soon as it comes in,” says Church.
It’s a habit Venter already follows. As more genes are discovered, he says, he constantly checks his own genome.”
For all the genetic genealogists out there, our habit will undoubtedly be comparing our genomes in order to find or identify potential relatives. Sure, curing disease and improving health is important, but genealogy is FUN!
The DNA Network has provided LOTS of coverage of the diploid genome release, so check out the following:
- EyeonDNA, here and here.
- Bitesizebio
- SNPedia
- Discovering Biology in a Digital World
- evolgen
- Genomicron
- Scienceroll
- The Genealogue (not a member of the DNA Network).
Whew, that should keep you busy for a while!!
September 9th, 2007 at 1:20 am
J. Craig Venter and Personal Genetics(Genetic Genealogist) And here are the others: Association analysis of chromosome 1 migraine candidate genes (BioMed Central) Gene For Controlling Height Discovered (Future Pundit)
September 5th, 2007 at 11:03 am
[...] you haven’t read any of the stories, CNN has one here, and my fellow bloggers have posted several here, here, here, here, here, and [...]
September 5th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
“I’m not sure where the sequence is”
The sequence can be found at
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/pub/TraceDB/Personal_Genomics
Note that the Venter sequence is not primary data. This appears to be a scrubbed and distilled consensus assembled into large contigs. Total size = ~12G
The Watson data in the same directory does appear to be raw, fresh from the 454 machines.
Total size = ~19.5G
September 5th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Thanks for the information and the link!
September 5th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
[...] is up. And several of my buddy bloggers have posted on it. Blaine posted on it here and has a nice wrap up.From The Canadian site The Globe and MailMost experts predict that routinely reading individual [...]
September 7th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
[...] the Genetic Genealogist, has interesting comments about what this new diploid genome means for us plus a comprehensive list of other bloggers’ posts [...]
September 8th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
[...] from the reference genome. He also differs from the reference genome by insertions and… J. Craig Venter and Personal Genetics linked to by 2 posted to The Genetic Genealogist on Wed 5th Sep 07Wow, what a day for personal [...]
September 11th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
[...] haven’t read any of the stories, CNN has one here, and my fellow bloggers have posted several here, here, here, here, here, and [...]
October 20th, 2007 at 10:59 am
[...] in San Francisco just ended. One of the first speakers was J. Craig Venter, whose genome was recently sequenced. He gave a lecture about personalized medicine, personal genetics, and his new book, [...]
January 11th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Genealogy is really FUN. Ive been doing this for about 20 years
February 18th, 2008 at 1:04 am
[...] … scienceroll.com/2007/12/04/personalized-genetics-b… [Found on Yahoo! Search] 8. J. Craig Venter and Personal Genetics " The Genetic Genealogist Wow, what a day for personal genetics. Yesterday, J. Craig Venter’s diploid genome was released [...]
March 26th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
[...] Genome is the New Gold Standard as does Dr. Blaine Bettinger, The Genetic Genealogist, in his post J. Craig Venter and Personal Genetics.More blog buzz:Discovering Biology in a Digital World: Watson’s genome, Venter’s genome, what’s the [...]