The Weekly Round-Up

This week there have been several stories of note that I've not had time to blog about, so I thought I'd start a weekly round-up of interesting news pieces.

[1] Starting with the Sanger Institutes announcement of their own 10,000 genomes project. The WTSI is performing its own 10,000 genomes project, its aim to help uncover the various genetic elements that predispose to various diseases and disorders by full resequencing of 4,000 individuals, and the exomes of another 6,000.

[2] This announcement from the WTSI comes in the same week that the original 1000 genomes project announces its release of their pilot data, prior to the start of their database for public and research use.

[3] I've already covered this story, but it seems, to me at least, a step forward towards the implementation of clinical sequencing by the Royal Brompton Hospital

[4] An interview with Francis Collins in The Times about how he sees the future of genomic medicine panning out, with an emphasis on the hurdles still to overcome, including the education of physicians and the general public about personal genomics and personalized medicine.

[5] 23andMe have published their first paper in PLoS Genetics, a GWAS of various phenotypic traits. Whilst most of these may seem superficial (hair colour, eye colour, etc), it is their research framework that is the focus of this paper.

[6] Its 10 years since Craig J. Venter and Francis Collins stepped out on the White House Lawn with President Bill Clinton to announce the complete draft of the Human Genome.

There has been much speculation about the predicted impact of genomic medicine, and whether or not it has, or will be able to, deliver on all its promises. It's true that most of the general public won't have noticed the significant advances made in genomic medicine, but I think we are within 10 years of routine clinical sequencing and the start of an era in personalized medicine. Watch this space!