1) Ultradeep Sequencing of a Human Ultraconserved Region Reveals Somatic and Constitutional Genomic Instability: This is one of the titles you go "what is this" and then realize that the methodology is pretty interesting. The idea in the article is to look at ultraconserved regions in the genome and then compare them to DNA from cancer cells to see if mutations in these regions cause cancer. Here is the abstract.
Early detection of cancer-associated genomic instability is crucial, particularly in tumour types in which this instability represents the essential underlying mechanism of tumourigenesis. Currently used methods require the presence of already established neoplastic cells because they only detect clonal mutations. In principle, parallel sequencing of single DNA filaments could reveal the early phases of tumour initiation by detecting low-frequency mutations, provided an adequate depth of coverage and an effective control of the experimental error. We applied ultradeep sequencing to estimate the genomic instability of individuals with hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC). To overcome the experimental error, we used an ultraconserved region (UCR) of the human genome as an internal control. By comparing the mutability outside and inside the UCR, we observed a tendency of the ultraconserved element to accumulate significantly fewer mutations than the flanking segments in both neoplastic and nonneoplastic HNPCC samples. No difference between the two regions was detectable in cells from healthy donors, indicating that all three HNPCC samples have mutation rates higher than the healthy genome. This is the first, to our knowledge, direct evidence of an intrinsic genomic instability of individuals with heterozygous mutations in mismatch repair genes, and constitutes the proof of principle for the development of a more sensitive molecular assay of genomic instability.2) 'Junk DNA' Could Spotlight Breast and Bowel Cancer: Continuing with the cancer theme, this is an interesting news article investigating the relationship between cancer and non-coding regions of the genome.
3) My Oh Mayan! 2012 may indeed be the end of the world as we know it: This is an older article on 2012 and the impending apocalypse (not!). An interesting read on the schism between new age believers. It however would be nice if people included the actual Maya in the conversation (sort of a point of contention with me). Do you think the Maya get anything from the profits of the movie 2012.
4) Homemade 365 : The challenge - every day for one year, make something homemade - not just cook dinner, but usually make the homemade version of something that is usually purchased whole. Want to play along? J's new blog getting a shameless plug from her husband.
5) Science 2.0? A good blog post from fellow refuge from the LBA at KU. Kris is a way more informative blogger than me, which is of course why I now tweet.
