Affordable DNA Sequencing And Computational Power
Avandia is an oral medication used to treat Type II diabetes. It is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline and was approved by the FDA. So far the diabetes drug has been used by over 6 million people worldwide, and could be responsible for thousands of heart attacks and deaths every year.
Pharma, biotech and agriculture markets as well as academic institutions are craving for DNA sequence information as their future is depending on genome data in silico. Scientists understand the business side of the sector, and realize that outsourcing can be a pretty cost efficient way to get the data they need, rather than investing in the resources to perform the sequencing in their labs. In addition, outsourcing gives these institutions the ability to focus their efforts on their core competencies, usually drug discovery and development, instead of acquiring the tools for sequencing.
Is there something like American Genes, a group of genes that is unique to USA ?
The following NY-times article is the answer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02...
Relevant:
http://www.theroot.com/
http://www.cyberpursuits.com/g...
http://AfricanDNA.com
The Genome Reviews database provides an up-to-date, standardized and comprehensively annotated view of the genomic sequence of organisms with completely deciphered genomes. Currently, Genome Reviews contains the genomes of archaea, bacteria, bacteriophages and selected eukaryota. Genome Reviews is available as a MySQL relational database, or a flat file format derived from that in the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database.
MySQL is a convenient platform for open source data transactions. That means genetic data of nearly all available species can be uploaded and retrieved.
It is not as complicated as you think as long as you stick on the recipe.
1. Apply POI (Perturbation Of Interest) to your cells.
This could be a drug treatment, hyper- or hypo- oxia treatment or simply disease cells.
2. Get your normal control, untreated cells ready.
Now we are going to take molecular genetics pictures of your cells.
3. Spin down your cells.
4. Isolate RNA.
5. Get the cDNA copy of the RNA.
The cDNA copy of your cells represents the most recent status of cells of interest. Ready to take the picture.
Amyloid beta (Aβ or Abeta) is a peptide of 39–43 amino acids that appear to be the main constituent of amyloid plaques in the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients.
The protein fragment, Aβ, that is broken down in a normal brain, begins to accumulate into tiny clusters known as plaques. These plaques exist between nerve cells in the brain and have the effect of destroying nerve tissue. It has been known for some time that the higher the levels of beta amyloid in the brain the greater the level of brain impairment.
Genetics is a abstract concept. Everybody knows that genetics is about DNA, about genes, diseases and about your children. But the details are obscure to the general public. How genes are associated with diseases ? How a disease is transmitted from your grand parents to your children ? These are important questions.
However, if you try to explain these with scary terminology such as epigenetics, neural pathways, biotechnology, dominant inheritance, gene-methylation you more often scare the average Joe.
The United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system (Source: Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences). Therefore, for the time being, and hopefully until the end of the Obama term United States is the best international model of a wealthy but under-performing health care system. The current USA health care statistics and the predictions for the next decade are of particular importance of showing what can be done in the developing nations on health care with ever growing GPDs.
Do you remember the modeled characters in AVATAR ? The movie was not science-fiction shoot in a cheap studio. The characters were actual living chracters in silico, in the computer. Human or MA-VI characters were modeled and computers calculated every single move in real-time. This is the digital technology of today.
Imagine, with the ever growing computational power, every single DNA base of your genetic material and every single amino-acid of your flesh and bone is modeled and computers calculate every move of your genes, your muscles, your sperms.
Super Computer
Roadrunner is a fast computer. To put the computer's speed in perspective, it has roughly the computing power of 100,000 of today's most powerful laptops stacked 1.5 miles high, according to IBM. Or, if each of the world's 6 billion people worked on hand-held computers for 24 hours a day, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day. The investment into roadrunner is nothing compared to its abilities. Only, $100 million.
