Wired Magazine: A Marked Man.

Man suffers for decades with cancer of the kidneys. Nothing helps. Gets tumor sequenced. Discovers the cancer in his kidney is actually pancreatic cancer. Man changes cancer treatment regimen, and lives. Full story in Wired.

How To Use MyGenomeBox

See the YouTube video here. 

De-Extinction

Add to the list of undreamed possibilities: bringing species back from the dead, or de-extinction. Stewart Brand talks about the possibilities in his Ted Talk. This is only one angle in the larger promise that Biotechnology will enable the reversal and/or repair of some of the more unfortunate impacts of the Anthropocene, along with proprietary crops to sequester CO2, proprietary algae to metabolize organic waste into more carbon-neutral fuels, etc. Hunted Species X into extinction? Oops -- our bad. Here -- we brought back Species X. Let's have a do-over, okay? (Link)

Stewart Brand TED Talk on De-Extinction

My Genome Box: An app model for your genomic data

For those of you who don't understand how Biotech and genomic sequencing applies to you, here's a start: For $2500 (reduced from $1BB price tag in the year 2000) you can send a spit kit to Diagnomics, Inc. They will load your genomic data into the My Genome Box service, where you can browse a selection of genomic apps that will tell you a bunch of things, from the frivolous (how much Neanderthal DNA you contain, cost=$0) to your BRCA gene profile for breast cancer (for $19 -- compare to Myriad Genetics' $3000+ price tag for this relatively simple test). Heredity, predisposition to various diseases, tendency toward/away from various psychological traits, etc., most of these studies costing in the $5 range. I'm also pretty sure they'll have an interface app for your phone or tablet soon, too.

It's a new world.

Here's a screen snapshot:

DNA Is The Meaning Molecule.

We are made of sequenced, folded protein. 

That’s the machinery of life. It’s the machinery of the planet. 

If the White Cliffs of Dover are the trace residue of millions of years of warfare between microscopic sea organisms, and if the very atmosphere we breathe is the accretion of respiration of living organisms, then DNA is literally the machinery that can transform a planet. DNA is something that you can’t see, but can literally move mountains and fill oceans and populate the sky with clouds.

DNA is the machinery that animates the world. 

If the only observable point of DNA is the replication of itself, then DNA is the ultimate wellspring of all meaning. Meaning comes from culture which comes from people who come from organic life that comes from DNA, and time. DNA plus time equals meaning. 

DNA is the meaning molecule. 

What does DNA mean to you?

In an earlier incarnation of this Aminopop blog, I was approached to answer the question, "What does DNA mean to you?" My answer:

I've always been a technologist, a hacker. For me that inclination has played out mostly in the arena of computers and software, but the larger Hacker Ethos -- of using existing technologies in new or unexpected ways, or of combining new and old technologies in surprising ways -- keeps leading me towards DNA. And DNA seems like the most hackable substance on the planet at this point. 

For me, that insight started with an interest in Genetic Algorithms -- a programming approach that leverages raw computing power, profligate mutation and fitness selection over traditional software design. It was really great for a broad range of problems: classification, optimization, etc. I was using them mostly in the context of financial instruments and risk underwriting.

But I had this persistent sensation of the hairs going up on the back of my neck -- once I started to grok how GAs worked, I started getting this strange, gut feeling for the billion-year, mondo genetic algorithm demolition-derby/continuous-birthing-process that is Life On Earth: here's this linear data stream -- the genome, or better yet, all the genomes -- written in this foreign language, totally protean in expression, capable of transforming a planet... I mean, infotech is great, but it's really nothing next to the power of sequenced protein. 

How can you not be just totally hypnotized by that awesome power? And once people harness it, I think it's going to make the infotech boom look like a tea-party. And I've always been kind of a closet Life Sciences geek, so that suits me fine. So that's it: to me, DNA represents the Next Great Hack -- maybe the Last Great Hack; who knows what the world -- what humanity -- will look like on the other side of the biotech boom? 

As an investor, DNA means opportunity: huge leaps in efficiency, innovation, design and scale of drugs, foods, fuels, manufactured hard goods, even information technology. Hard to even imagine all of it. I don't think people generally get it, yet. That's why I'm doing my blog, Aminopop.com -- as a regular discipline to try to get a handle on it all. I don't even feel like I'm very good at it, yet, but not to try seems kind of insane, especially at this moment in history. So I just jump in.

As a humanist, DNA suggests a moment of truth, historically speaking. Wresting our ongoing genetic definition from the mostly cruel forces of natural selection is going to be a profoundly defining moment. What is human? It's what we say it is -- and what we write that it is, when we master the glyphs, grammar and syntax of the genome. It's the ultimate act of existentialism.

Exactly, Jean Paul

Doudna = Do U DNA. Coincidence? You decide.

Jennifer Doudna.
"Doudna" -- Add two spaces and you get
Do U DNA? (Yes, emphatically. Yes, she does.)

Really? Am I the only person to observe this?