Mar 2013
Learnt Lessons
25/03/13 16:19 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan | HeLa cells;
When the genome of HeLa cancer cell line was published, it turned out that Henrietta Lacks' family did not appear to give its consent to have the genome published. Jeri Lacks-Whye, Lacks' granddaughter in a New York Times op-ed complained that the HeLa genome sequence should not have been published without their consent as it might have compromised their family's privacy. As a consequence, the researchers who published the HeLa genome apologized to the family, edited their news release, and took the HeLa data down. S. Pelech questions the value of sequencing genomes without strong phenotypic data to correlate with genetic variants, and finds it hard to accept that the privacy of Lacks' family was actually compromised in a meaningful way. HeLa cells are amongst the best characterized of these established cancer cell lines, so it is a real shame that the HeLa cell genome sequence will not be broadly accessible to cancer researchers to improve our understanding of this most deadly disease. Read More...
Night of the Living Dead Pigeon
15/03/13 16:18 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Ben Novak, is a 26-year-old genetics student who has put his graduate studies on hold to help bring the extinct passenger pigeon back from the dead by sequencing available fragments of the genome of the passenger pigeon from the slime left in museum specimens and comparing them to the genome of its cousin, the band-tailed pigeon. Working with evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Novak hopes to complete full sequences of the passenger and band-tailed pigeon genomes within a year. S. Pelech comments that even with the successful sequencing of the complete genome of the passenger pigeon, the site-directed mutagenesis of the genome of a living pigeon relative to convert it into a passenger pigeon is just too expensive and time-consuming to be worthwhile. Read More...
The Proteoform
06/03/13 16:16 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Lloyd Smith, Neil Kelleher, and the Consortium for Top Down Proteomics in a correspondence to Nature Methods suggested the term "proteoform" to describe all the shapes that a protein can assume and to differentiate it from isoforms that arise from alternative splicing of the same gene. S. Pelech suggested that if the word "proteoform" was extended to include protein complexes, the meaning of term would be too diluted and it would be overly broad. Instead, he proposed adoption of another term "proteocomplex" to refer to the specific composition and stoichiometry of subunits in protein complexes. Read More...