genomeboy.com

This is intelligent design?

The GET Conference 2010 marks the last chance in history to collect everyone with a personal genome sequence on the same stage to share their experiences and discuss the important ways in which personal genomes will affect all of our lives in the coming years.

Tickets are pricey. This is a (long overdue, IMHO) fundraiser for PersonalGenomes.org:

We foresee a day when many individuals will want to get their own genome sequenced so that they may use this information to understand such things as their individual risk profiles for disease, their physical and biological characteristics, and their personal ancestries. To get to this point will require a critical mass of interested users, tools for obtaining and interpreting genome information, and supportive policy, research, and service communities.

Of all the options, a company called DNA 11 offers perhaps the most personalized gift of all. It sends people a DNA collection kit to swab the inside of their cheek. For $200 to $1,000, DNA 11 analyzes the sample, takes a photo and blows it up to create a big piece of artwork that looks like colorful skyscrapers against the night sky. People can also make portraits from their fingerprints or lips.

Adrian Salamunovic, who co-founded DNA 11, has a wall-size red DNA portrait of his pet beagle in his living room. As he put it, “The trend of personalization is huge, and what’s more personal than DNA?”

If they had wi-fi, I’d be on the first spaceship out of town:

If it sounds unrealistic to suggest that astronauts would be willing to leave home never to return alive, then consider the results of several informal surveys I and several colleagues have conducted recently. One of my peers in Arizona recently accompanied a group of scientists and engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on a geological field trip. During the day, he asked how many would be willing to go on a one-way mission into space. Every member of the group raised his hand. The lure of space travel remains intoxicating for a generation brought up on “Star Trek” and “Star Wars.”

Moms are more than sources of existential angst and mitochondrial DNA. My friend Nicole Chaison has written a book that demonstrates this with unmatched wit and aplomb. It’s called The Passion of the Hausfrau and if you are a parent or ever had parents, then you should obtain a copy post haste.

My older brother, with whom I share 50% of my DNA*, gets his book pimped in today’s New York Times:

I’ve been reading a truly excellent book by Joshua Angrist and Jorn-Steffen Pischke called Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist’s Companion. It’s not written for a general audience, but if you pulled an A- or better on a college-level econometrics course (and if you love Freakonomics), then this is the book for you.

It makes a swell gift, too.

*as far as I know anyway…oh Mom, you little minx

I was trying to embed the recent Charlie Rose show featuring George Church, Steve Pinker, Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki…epic fail on my part. (UPDATE: Jason succeeds). In any event, you should watch it.

Meanwhile, here’s your consolation prize :

Fantastic article in the Boston Globe about former George Church-student Katherine Aull, who has set up a lab in her apartment and is testing herself for hemochromatosis mutations.

(Hat tip: GenomeWeb)

Bob, who’s owned wild animals all his life, admits Higgins has not always been a model pet. When Higgins was 3, he slept with the couple, often awakening Bob in the morning by climbing to the bedroom rafters and dropping onto Bob’s stomach. On one occasion, they got in a wrestling match, and Higgins put one of his “steel-like fingernails” through Bob’s scrotum.

Bob has considered moving him to a sanctuary, but “I’m just too attached to him,” he says.

…

Bob has been bitten several times by Higgins, who now weighs 50 pounds and has large incisors. Once, when Bob was leading him from an outdoor enclosure back to his cage in the house, Higgins exploded and the two got into a battle so ferocious that despite the steel mesh glove Bob was wearing, he screamed for Carlie to get his .22 rifle and put a bullet in Higgins’s head. She got Higgins a slice of raisin bread instead, quickly defusing the fight. But Bob accepts it: a wild animal will never be domesticated, he says.

…

“He shivered and I leaned over and said, ‘Come here, baby, are you cold?’ and he exploded,” Ms. Bowers says. “He started biting and screaming at me, biting any place he could touch. It was a nightmare. We tipped over furniture, I would have killed him if I could. But he was so strong. I tried to choke him to make him stop. We fought for I don’t know how long. I was trying to hold him so he couldn’t bite me. I took one of my big fabric books and held it on his throat.”

…

JUDIE HARRISON, 50 and three times married, is an extreme example of monkey love. She once demanded that her 15-year-old son give up his bedroom for a chimp, and today she is estranged from all three of her children because she put the primates first. Her passion also cost her her home.

Words fail.