Mapping neurons without glial cells ~ SNP genotyping w/o whole sequencing?

Nature’s Journal Club column is usually a good & always a short read providing exciting angles on scientific topics/papers from good researchers. Recently ‘neuroscientist’ Dave Featherstone argued for a broader approach to brain mapping by not restricting it only to the connectome between neurons. Neurons are making up less than 10% of the human brain…

Visualize 23andMe haplogroup defining SNPs with Mitowheel!

Last Friday 23andMe came up with Haplogroup Tree Mutation Mapper which is the first experimental feature that can be instantly tested by biogeek customers (a large portion of  the company’s customer base) in its freshly launched technology sandbox 23andMe Labs that is much like Google Labs. Haplogroup Tree Mutation Mapper “shows you which particular mutations…

The Decision Tree: Thomas Goetz’s upcoming book on predictive/personalized medicine

In the past months Thomas Goetz begun writing a book on the radical changes already ongoing but mostly upcoming in healthcare due to affordable new technologies and quantitative approaches in personalized genomics and medicine. The book is to be called The Decision Tree (explanation below) accompanied by a new website. Thomas is the perfect man…

How to predict the future via Twitter: Kids’n’Kits or 23andMe’s Holiday Family Pack!

After the first Twitter prediction here is my second one back from September, realized today: and here we go….Happy Holidays Grandma you’got a 2fold risk for psoriasis but don’t worry too much about the Alcohol Flush Reaction and your caffeine consumption! Actually I tried to convince

Who’s first? Happy First Birthday, commercial personal genomics!

What do you think, which company launched the first commercial and comprehensive personal genome service (based on a genome-wide SNP scan) on the market and exactly when? We have 2 candidates here in the ring deCODE Genetics (founded in 1996, Iceland) and 23andMe (founded in 2006, USA), the Amundsen and Scott of personal genomics. (please…

Nature Personal Genomics Very Special

The newest Nature issue concentrates on personal genomics and its consequences via many types of articles some of them with free access. I only read 1 piece so far by Erika Check Hayden, who has the exclusive freedom at Nature to always pick the best stories and write on any of them, but being a…

Golden day for 23andMe: Time’s 2008 Invention of the Year

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…

23andMe on Twitter & now offering services in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Israel

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 eminent corporate blog can offer. Microblogging is always quicker blogging! Based on the first 4 tweets (on the photo) the guys will not…

Mountain View – Budapest: 20 days to get my 23andMe profile!

I ordered my first commercial genetic profile from 23andMe on the 9th of September online, FedExed my 2 ml saliva from Budapest to 23andMe, Mountain View on the 12th of September. I got the results today. That said within 3 weeks since the birth of the idea I purchased more than 500 000 SNPs of…

Sergey Brin, Gly2019Ser & a real chance against Parkinson disease/aging!

It was already known that amongst the Google top people Sergey Brin is the one who is most interested in pushing biotechnology and the biomedical sciences: in his Stanford years he was interested in biology courses according to The Google Story, he married Anne Wojcicki (who graduted from biology at Yale), Google invested $4.4 million…

My personalized genetics: 2 ml saliva FedExed to 23andMe!

As the second operation of building my genetically well informed future yesterday (2 days after completing the order) I collected 2 ml of my saliva with the help of 23andMe’s Oragene DNA self-collection kit manufactured by DNA Genotek. First operation has been the sequencing of the D-loop of my mitochondrial DNA out of 5 ml…

Just ordered my 23andMe kit for $399+shipping!

It was time for me to enter personally into the age of commercialized-personalized genetics/genomics and not just to talk about it! New price, new customers! Here is my suggestion to the sales department of 23andMe! 23andMe Democratizes Personal Genomics With New Analytical Platform

Halcyon Molecular: whole genome sequencing well under $1000?

Halcyon Molecular is a quite ambitious startup,  don’t you think? What we do: Halcyon Molecular is developing an ultra-low-cost DNA sequencing technology. Our single molecule approach does not require PCR amplification and will allow for megabase read lengths with simultaneous determination of methylation pattern. We aim to sequence entire human genomes de novo for well…

Innovation stop: “All they’ve done is created an extra billing event for the doctor”

It’s my first real encounter with a situation in which the officials of the state of California are clearly against innovation for financial reasons obvious enough (is enough): Wired Science, Alexis Madrigal, upcoming BioBarCamper: Exclusive: DNA Tester Reveals Cease-and-Desist Letter Wired.com has obtained a copy of the cease-and-desist letter sent to Navigenics by the state…

Future stop: California health officials against personal genetics risk-takers

It’s official: The California Department of Public Health wants practicing physicians (many of them prehistorically, sorry, traditionally trained) to be the patres familias in issues between personal genetic test takers and direct-to-consumer personal genetic testing start-ups while declining the test takers’ right to get familiar with their own genetic makeup and risks by their own.…

The Sergey, Larry, Eric test by Anne & Linda: 23andMe at home

“We really think that we can change Health Care…I want to change it in 5 years…it has to change and that’s we all are about” – says Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe co-founder, in the Google Tech Talk on Googling the Googlers’ DNA: A Demonstration of the 23andMe Personal Genome Service. Also a good presentation by Linda…

O’Reilly Startup Camp for geeky biotech startups too!

The O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures Startup Camp is a nice option for the emerging personalized genomics companies or any web-related biotech startups to communicate and cooperate with alpha geeks and early technology adopters. Tim O’Reilly writes: The Thursday and Friday (July 10-11) before this year’s Foo Camp in Sebastopol July 11-13, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures will be…

How to predict the future via Twitter: Google invests in Navigenics

Wow, I guess it’s time for me to move into the stock market business! Here’s the story via David Bradley’s tweet: Julie Kent, Search Engine Journal, April 21st, 2008: Google Wants to Index Genetic Information, Invests in Second DNA Start-Up In 2007, Google made headlines when they invested $4.4 million in 23andMe, a genetic screening…

Dear StartupSearch: Is 23andMe a web-based startup or not?

1. A start-up is a company with a limited operating history (Wikipedia). 2. Startup search “tracks the web technology ecosystem commonly referenced as “Web 2.0.” We collect facts and figures about new web products, startup companies, key startup employees, and the funding dollars powering their growth.” 3. 23andMe is a pioneering web-based, personalized genomics startup…

The second goal of 23andMe: using customer’s real health data later

Esther Dyson‘s honest post on getting the genotype-health risk correlation statistics right on The Spittoon blog: What You Can Do for 23andMe (and Future Generations) To learn more, researchers need to collect thousands of genetic profiles – and the health data connected with each of them – to find correlations between the two. That leads…

The Spittoon: the eminent corporate blog of 23andMe and Consumer Enabled Research

The personal genomics service 23andMe just launched publicly a corporate blog called The Spittoon that has been internally up for a few weeks. It is a new chapter in biotech corporate blogging. Just like the web page of 23andMe, The Spittoon’s WordPress blog platform, the concept and design is excellent: amongst others you can find…

23andMe on the biparental inheritance of mitochondrial DNA and more

In my former blog post inF.A.Q. for 23andMe: what if I have mitochondrial DNA from Pa? I meditated on 23andMe‘s capability of detecting paternal mitochondrial DNA in their customers’ saliva with their Illumina microarray chips scanning around 2000 mitochondrial single nucleotide variants. Published here the initial answer of the 23andMe Editorial Team to this fairly…

inF.A.Q. for 23andMe: what if I have mitochondrial DNA from Pa?

Have you ever asked any important but infrequently asked questions? Have you ever heard about the first personal genome service by the biotech startup 23andMe? Here is an inF.A.Q. addressed to this company: According to the cool 23andMe genetics educator: According to the peer review literature this is not necessarily the case and sometimes (rarely…

Pan-galactic experience: the 23andMe “official launch” webcast

Wow, what an all web experience it was: Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki co-founders presenting their slides on the just launched personal genome service of their company 23andMe, then answering questions. The whole webcast will be available later on their website. Here is a very short account of their webcast based on my texting and…

Web entrepreneurs and biotech: strangers from distant lands

Elrond: Strangers from distant lands, friends of old you have been summoned here to answer the threat of Mordor. Middle Earth stands upon the brink of destruction, none can escape it. You will unite or you will fall. Each race is bound to this fate, this one doom. Bring forth the ring, Frodo. [Frodo puts…

23andMe: Genetics brings people together, rather than differentiate

“We are all from the same seed” – Kara Swisher summarizes what she heard from Linda Avey, co-founder of web based personal genome service 23andMe in the video interview below. Linda and the other founder Anne Wojcicki just talked about the company’s ancestry, genetic comparison and similarity seeking services, the ones that will technologically turned…

23andMe’s mission: connecting all people on the DNA level or social networking XY.0

In these days, tech companies with MISSIONS are flourishing. I guess you’ve already heard about the company, whose mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. The newly launched, Mountain View based 23andMe seems similar in the mission respect. 23andMe is the first (already successful) and web (or rather…

The life extension bonus effect of personal genome services: +10 years?

After all, what customers can really expect of personal genome services that companies like 23andMe can offer beyond knowing whether they have a perfect pitch or not? If the service can really help in minimizing the risk of life threatening diseases, than the real expectation is to live longer by using those personalized/commercialized genome data.…

Spit a big in a tube, search with Genome Explorer: the 23andMe way

Detailed article in the New York Times on the early experience of decoding the genetic code and interpreting the customers’ DNA via the service of 23andMe. The buzz name of the project: personalized genetics/genomics. Although other companies are mentioned briefly, the focus is clearly on 23andMe. The basics: get rid of a thousand bucks (sorry,…