This is a golden day for 23andMe despite all crisis worries:
Mountain View, CA (PRWEB) October 30, 2008 — TIME Magazine announced today that the Personal Genome Service™ from 23andMe, Inc. has been named 2008’s Invention of the Year. 23andMe was chosen as the year’s most significant invention for its exceptional work in making personal genomics accessible and affordable.
From the industrial point of view what are the components of success here besides the obviously good team:
- mission: big, Google-sized mission: revolution of health care by personal genetic information as the source of upcoming personalized medicine
- biotechnology: based on the highest available technology platforms in microarrays (Illumina) (watch out, next gen sequencing is in the corner!)
- capital investment and network effect: I can only repeat myself: 23andMe is probably the most well-connected and backed startup in the history of Silicon Valley.(photo: happy 23andMe founders and early customers)
- information technology the cool and user-friendly factor of the browser based service is really amazing (in the past couple of weeks I demonstrated it to a bunch of people and even those were able to catch the essence of the available information who are older, web-unsavvy)
- simplicity of service: you just spit 2ml into a tube and FedEx it
- most aggressive marketing strategy based largely on the network effect among the power elite of the USA (and consequently, the world)
From the consumer point of view let me tell you 1 personal example of the lifestyle effect of the service: Read the rest of this entry »
October 14, 2008 is the world’s first Open Access Day and OA itself means free online access to peer-reviewed research articles. Although we have other, slower methods, like personal homepages, emails to authors, institutional repositories to get the same article we were unable to get via closed access journals, OA is the internet-savvy solution that fits our time and science.
Let me briefly answer question 4 of the synchroblogging initiative: What do you do to support Open Access, and what can others do?
I did a lot of beta testingfor free for the upcoming Google Research Datasets in this summer which will host terabytes of scientific raw data that should be in the public domain or have to have a Creative Commons license. I really liked this work.
We live in a world where people expect instant, relevant information in the top 20 hits from a Google search and that expectation is transferring to science too. I don’t care how prestigious you think your journal is, or whether you see yourself as some kind of “guardian of knowledge”. I want information, I want it now and if you can’t deliver, I’m going somewhere else.
The 2009 AAAS Science Dance Contest is for hidden artists disguised as scientists, nerds and shameless self promoters who are tempted to dance their PhDs, upload it to YouTube and enjoy microcelebrity. A real thesis live, non-profit but for fun and a one and only chance to make a fool out of you.
This is a perfect match for John Bohannon, The Gonzo Scientist (whom I introduced you back in 2007) who is an organizer, chronicler and participator of the contest and I must say I liked the rather-theatrical-performance-than-simple-dance version of his thesis, entitled The role of the WSS operon in the adaptive evolution of experimental populations of Pseudomonas flurescens SBW25 (here).
But what to think of the performance of a professor with a thesis title: “Analysis of thymic nurse cells in the chicken”? Artist, nerd, self promoter, did I miss something?
Here are the details of how to enter the contest and don’t miss to read about the prizes too (guests at the 2009 AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago):
The contest is open to anyone who has (or is pursuing) a Ph.D. in any scientific field,Read the rest of this entry »
Green fluorescent protein (GFP) is something really familiar for many biologists, now it will be familiar for the whole world for a period via the Chemistry Nobel Prize:
The remarkable brightly glowing green fluorescent protein, GFP, was first observed in the beautiful jellyfish, Aequorea victoria in 1962. Since then, this protein has become one of the most important tools used in contemporary bioscience. With the aid of GFP, researchers have developed ways to watch processes that were previously invisible, such as the development of nerve cells in the brain or how cancer cells spread.
The Google Tech Talks channel on YouTube slowly but irresistibly became my private university in current tech trends. Here is a recent talk on the amazing HealthMap by its developers John Brownstein, Clark Freifeld, Mikaela Keller. According to the about page:
HealthMap brings together disparate data sources to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health.
It’s Nobel time! Hands up: how many of you have checked so far the official website of the Nobel Foundation called Nobelprize.org? And please try to recall how you usually found out who won the particular Nobel prizes in the past years.
This year the first announcement, for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, will be made on 6 October, that is tomorrow. The folks at Nobelprize.org created a list of cool alerts around the Prize Announcements this year and here’s what my inbox detected out of this:
RSS Feed. Sign up to the 2008 Nobel Prize RSS feed and receive breaking news of the Nobel Prize Announcements and links to exclusive content, such as interviews with the new Nobel Laureates and summaries of the Nobel Prizes, as it appears on Nobelprize.org.
News Widget. With the news widget , you can discover the names of the 2008 Nobel Prize Laureates on your website, blog or social network. Get the easy-to-add code that will allow you to host the 2008 Nobel Prizes widget.
Live Web Casts. All announcements will be broadcast live on Nobelprize.org (except for Peace which is announced in Oslo and for which the video footage will be available after a short delay).
Finally 23andMe, my first personal genetics service provider, is on Twitter which could mean that from now on first-hand company information will flow even more continuously compared to what the regularly/daily updated eminentcorporate blog can offer. Microblogging is always quicker blogging! Based on the first 4 tweets (on the photo) the guys will not just simply link to the posts but communicate with other Twitterers and give informal & brand new info.
From the industrial point of view what are the components of success here besides the obviously good team:
- information technology the cool and user-friendly factor of the browser based service is really amazing (in the past couple of weeks I demonstrated it to a bunch of people and even those were able to catch the essence of the available information who are older, web-unsavvy)
