Interesting Stuff

Interesting work on the diverse character of Ancient Britons (from Iron-Age to Anglo-Saxon) coming from this work and this revealing continuity of the population up to the migration experienced in the Anglo-Saxon era as well as the diversity of the Roman Empire even at its most Northerly extreme.

Some NGS (next generation sequencing) tools were used in the above studies which leads to…

Next Generation Sequencing

Single molecule real time (SMRT) sequencing
Heliscope single molecule sequencing
DNA nanoball sequencing
Ion Torrent semiconductor sequencing
SOLiD sequencing
Illumina (Solexa) sequencing
454 pyrosequencing
Polony sequencing
Massively parallel signature sequencing (MPSS)

Nanopore DNA sequencing
Tunnelling currents DNA sequencing
Sequencing by hybridization
Sequencing with mass spectrometry
Microfluidic Sanger sequencing
Microscopy-based techniques
RNAP sequencing
In vitro virus high-throughput sequencing

Trimming algorithms sometimes need to be used with these techniques, e.g. Cutadapt is one of many.

Genomic Editing

CRISPR – Clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats allows for quick and accurate changes to DNA. A powerful tool though it has caused concerns for inherited changes in DNA via the germline and with genetic drives particularly in the field of malaria, sickle cell, weeds and now ZIKA.

Nature v Nurture – the debate goes on

Oliver James the psychologist’s book “Not in your Genes” revokes the effect about genetic influences in multifactorial phenotypes. Well the missing heritability problem is still to be solved but the answer is there, at least partly, in the DNA somewhere – probably in genetic networks, expression sequences and perhaps epigenetic effects.