bio-Intelligence ( weekly links)

Weekly Links July 24th, 2017

2017-07-24T07:30:00.000+02:00

“MUST READ”

· Today’s Extreme Heat May Become Norm Within a Decade | Climate Central

When 2015 blew the record for hottest year out of the water, it made headlines around the world. via Pocket

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

Junk DNA, put simply, is those parts of the genome (human or otherwise) that have no known function. The human genome has about 19,000 genes. via Pocket

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

· An Introduction to Nanopore Sequencing - Bitesize Bio

DNA sequencing is the most powerful method to reveal genetic variations at the molecular level, leading to a better understanding of our body in physiological settings, and pathological conditions. It is the beginning of the long road towards better…

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

· How to Know When a New Target is Really a New Target | In the Pipeline

There are many examples in cancer biology of molecular changes that correlate with increased aggressiveness of cancer without necessarily causing the aggressive behaviour. via Pocket

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COMPANIES

· www.marketwired.com

CENTER VALLEY, PA Avantor®, a global supplier of ultra-high-purity materials for customers across the life sciences and advanced technologies sectors, has opened a new research center in Bridgewater, New Jersey (USA) to help biopharmaceutical and ph…

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· Formulatrix Unveil High-Throughput Digital PCR System | Front Line Genomics

Formulatrix has announced that next generation Constellation Digital PCR System will be revealed at the qPCR and Digital PCR Congress in Philadelphia next week (25 July). via Pocket

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· Thermo Fisher Scientific Introduces Next Generation of Complementary Technologies for Forensic DNA

Forensic scientists have traditionally used capillary electrophoresis (CE) to analyze STR markers for genetic profile comparisons with known individuals from the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database and other databases worldwide. via Poc…

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· Sino Biological Raises $29 Million in A Round - ChinaBio® Today

Sino Biological, a Beijing reagents developer, raised $29 million in a Series A round led by Qiming Venture Partners, a China VC with interest in life sciences. Founded in 2007 by MIT professor, Dr. Daniel I.C. Wang, and his former student, Dr. via …

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

· Culture for a digital age | McKinsey & Company

Risk aversion, weak customer focus, and siloed mind-sets have long bedeviled organizations. In a digital world, solving these cultural problems is no longer optional. via Pocket

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· Our plan to develop a Science of Content - NewsWhip

This is a post for NewsWhip’s customers — and for anyone using data to guide their content strategy. We believe publishing is entering a new era — one where success will be determined by how scientific you can be in your approach. via Pocket

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Weekly Links July 17th, 2017

2017-07-17T07:00:00.000+02:00

“MUST READ”

Secrets of the Human Genome - a Killian Lecture From MIT | LabRoots | Science News, Webinars and Virtual Events

tags: weeklylinks genome

This video is presented by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it features the president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and MIT's James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award winner for 2016-2017, Professor Eric Lander, a geneticist, molecular biologist, and mathematician. He is known for playing a major role in sequencing the human genome.

Meet CRISPR’s Younger Brother, SHERLOCK | Big Think

Along with Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, Feng Zhang is one of the inventors of CRISPR-cas9 — or “CRISPR” for short — the cut-and-paste method for editing evens that’s taken genetics by storm. via Pocket

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DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

An AI-Driven Genomics Company Is Turning to Drugs - MIT Technology Review

The next blockbuster drug could be developed with help from machine-learning techniques that are rapidly spreading from AI research to pharmacology labs. via Pocket

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

[BioTCom] Focus sur le génome - YouTube

Troisième épisode spécial focus de Biologie Tout Compris !Cette chaîne est animée par Tania Louis, docteure en biologie que vous pouvez suivre sur twitter : @SciTania----J'avais préparé une mini conférence pour le festival Play Azur 2017. Et je me s…

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Dry Blood Samples: Better and Cheaper Healthcare | Front Line Genomics

A drop of blood on filter paper, allowed to dry and stored for future diagnostic purposes is considerably easier than the present-day, resource-consuming method, using frozen blood samples in plastic tubes. via Pocket

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How the CRISPR-Cas9 System is Redefining Drug Discovery

The recent emergence of easily accessible CRISPR-Cas9 technologies is enabling nearly unlimited opportunities for genome editing. Apart from its potential as a therapeutic tool, the system is currently spurring a revolution in drug discovery. via Po…

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How to Choose Quality Antibodies for Successful Western Blotting - Bitesize Bio

Successful western blotting means achieving unambiguous results, and this requires a sensitive and specific antibody-antigen interaction. Consequently, high quality antibodies are critical for reliable and consistent western blotting. via Pocket

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Re-Imagining the Humble Pipette Tip | Front Line Genomics

They are the forgotten workhorse of laboratories across the world. A deceptively simple piece of technology that we use once, and then discard. via Pocket

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· What Do We Do with All the Chemical Elements? This Ingenious Periodic Table Shows You | Big Think
The period table is an important but rather dry scientific tool. It lists all the chemical elements, ordered by their atomic numbers. Elements with similar behavior are grouped in the same column (called a group), with metals generally on the left a…

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Things to Consider When Buying a Microscope Camera (Part 1) - Bitesize Bio

Purchasing a microscope camera is one of the most daunting tasks you might have to undertake. Before you set out to buy that camera, carefully consider your applications. Things like sample brightness or the speed of the phenomenon you are trying to…

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· Guidelines for Efficient Cell Sorting – Part 1 - Bitesize Bio

Flow cytometry is a pervasive tool to characterize just about anything in cell biology. From quantifying the expression of surface antigens, to determining the physiological changes in cells and everything in between, flow cytometry is as indispensa…

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

Future of Genomic Medicine 2017 - Carl Zimmer | Scripps Translational Science Institute

The Library of Babel: On Trying to Read My Genome Speaker Carl Zimmer, Columnist, The New York Times & STAT via Pocket

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Michael Bliss, Historian Who Dispelled Myths of Insulin’s Discovery, Dies at 76 - The New York Times

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The Reconfigurable Future of Healthcare | Xconomy

Data plays a more central role in healthcare than ever before. It won’t be long before every person’s genome is sequenced at birth, with follow-up sequencing done at regular intervals throughout life. via Pocket

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www.nytimes.com

In a significant advance in the study of mental ability, a team of European and American scientists announced on Monday that they had identified 52 genes linked to intelligence in nearly 80,000 people. These genes do not determine intelligence, howe…

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COMPANIES

· Sino Biological Raises $29 Million in A Round - ChinaBio® Today

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

www.nytimes.com

Pat Reilly had good reason to worry about Alzheimer’s disease: Her mother had it, and she saw firsthand the havoc it could wreak on a family, much of it financial. So Ms. Reilly, 77, a retired social worker in Ann Arbor, Mich., applied for a long-te…

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· When Will Climate Change Make the Earth Too Hot For Humans?

Peering beyond scientific reticence. It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime o…

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Weekly Links July 10th, 2017

2017-07-10T07:00:00.000+02:00

“MUST READ”

Baby Genome Sequencing for Sale in China - MIT Technology Review

A Boston-based DNA sequencing company is offering to decode the complete genomes of newborns in China, leading some to ask how much parents should know about their children’s genes at birth. via Pocket

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The Most Transformational Biologist of Our Era?

Eric J. Topol, MD: Hello. This is Eric Topol, editor-in-chief of Medscape. I am delighted to welcome Feng Zhang, who is with us today to discuss his extraordinary work in CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats). via Pocket

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DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

Can “Digital Therapeutics” Be as Good as Drugs? - MIT Technology Review

What if an app could replace a pill? That’s the big question behind an emerging trend known as “digital therapeutics.” The idea: software that can improve a person’s health as much as a drug can, but without the same cost and side-effects. via Pocket

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The Arrival of Artificial Intelligence – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

The history of computers is often told as a history of objects, from the abacus to the Babbage engine up through the code-breaking machines of World War II. via Pocket

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

Craig Venter's ‘Digital-to-Biological Converter’ Is Real - Motherboard

Craig Venter thinks that sending living organisms to other galaxies on spaceships is "definitely" science fiction. It's much more realistic, he thinks, to print them on-site using digital representations of their genome. He calls this "biological te…

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PCR Pitfalls: The Devil is in the Details - Bitesize Bio

PCR was actually one of the first lab techniques I learned as an undergrad. Despite being sometimes labeled as a pretty basic lab skill, PCR doesn’t always work as expected. via Pocket

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Fluorescent Western Blotting: Lowdown and Advantages - Bitesize Bio

In this article, I will introduce you to the world of fluorescent western blotting. Firstly, we’ll find out how it compares to chemiluminescent western blotting. Then, we will learn how infrared fluorescent western blotting can give you truly quanti…

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Scientists unveil CRISPR-based diagnostic platform | Broad Institute

A team of scientists from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, the Institute for Medical Engineering & Science at MIT, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Unive…

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

New concerns raised over value of genome-wide disease studies : Nature News & Comment

Compare the genomes of enough people with and without a disease, and genetic variants linked to the malady should pop out. via Pocket

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Apple’s needleless blood sugar tracker has an uphill battle in front of it - The Verge

Rumors are flying that Apple is developing some kind of wearable that would continuously track the user’s blood sugar without breaking their skin. For people with diabetes, this would be a huge improvement over the somewhat invasive or downright pai…

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Outbreaks, Evolution, and Rock 'n' Roll: Topol Talks to Pardis Sabeti

Editor's Note: Pardis Sabeti, MD, DPhil, is a member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a professor at the Center for Systems Biology and the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Ha…

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COMPANIES

IDT and Illumina collaborate to provide improved solutions for next generation sequencing market

Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) today announced a broad partnership with Illumina, Inc. to provide improved library preparation multiplexing and target enrichment solutions for the next generation sequencing (NGS) market. via Pocket

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Why Amazon is eating the world | TechCrunch

I co-founded a software startup in December. Each month, I send out an update to our investors to keep them updated on our progress. But the past month was a bit different — our industry (retail) is going through a transformation. via Pocket

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

www.nytimes.com

SAN FRANCISCO — When John Battelle’s teenage son broke his leg at a suburban soccer game, naturally the first call his parents made was to 911. The second was to Dr. Jordan Shlain, the concierge doctor here who treats Mr. Battelle and his family. vi…

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Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in | World news | The Guardian

Half a century ago, in the great hippie year of 1967, an acclaimed young American science fiction writer, Roger Zelazny, published his third novel. In many ways, Lord of Light was of its time, shaggy with imported Hindu mythology and cosmic dialogue…

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Weekly Links July 7th, 2017

2017-07-07T07:00:00.000+02:00

“MUST READ”

What If (Almost) Every Gene Affects (Almost) Everything? - The Atlantic

Three Stanford scientists have proposed a provocative new way of thinking about genetic variants, and how they affect people’s bodies and health. In 1999, a group of scientists scoured the genomes of around 150 pairs of siblings in an attempt to fin…

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Now That We Can Read Genomes, Can We Write Them? - The Atlantic

NEW YORK CITY—Since the Human Genome Project (HGP) was completed in 2003, scientists have sequenced the full genomes of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of species. Octopuses. Barley. Mosquitoes. Birch trees. via Pocket

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DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

Better than Dr. Watson or Dr Google, Dr. Baby explains the differences between: Complex and Complicated and, the Internet & Life sciences worlds! | LinkedIn

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

Antibody Validation Protocols - How To Choose The Most Appropriate

Not all antibodies are valid for every experiment and condition, and they must be validated for the specific application and species. Currently, there is no standard means of “antibody validation,” and this can greatly impact experimental reproducib…

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The Inhibitors Haunting Your PCR - Bitesize Bio

It often happens that you do everything right with a PCR. You have perfectly isolated template DNA, used sterile tubes and tips, used clean reagents, and said a quick prayer to the PCR Gods. And still, something unknown messes up your results. This …

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The Gadget that Makes DNA Sequencing Child’s Play – NEO.LIFE – Medium

I t is a Tuesday afternoon and Poppy, a 12-year-old girl in New York City, stands in front of her class and explains to her peers how the code of life can be read by passing a DNA strand through something called a nanopore. via Pocket

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The Go-To Gene Sequencing Machine With Very Strange Results | WIRED

When biologist Rahul Sinha started his first independent research project at Stanford last January, he had a single-minded goal. He had just completed his post-doc in the lab of Irv Weissman, the Stanford biologist who helped launch the field of ste…

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

Questioning the Value of Genome Sequencing in Healthy People | Front Line Genomics

The use of genome sequencing in healthy individuals has come under fire as of late due to the lack of understanding how many patients carry variants that put them at risk for rare genetic conditions and how they, and their doctors, will respond to l…

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CRISPR, human genetic modification, & a needed course correction - The Niche

Are designer babies made using CRISPR or other genetic modification technologies closer to reality today? If so, what exactly should we do about it? via Pocket

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What Cookies and Meth Have in Common - The New York Times

As a psychiatrist, I have yet to meet a patient who enjoys being addicted to drugs or compulsively overeating. Why would anyone continue to use recreational drugs despite the medical consequences and social condemnation? What makes someone eat more …

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When the Patient Is a Gold Mine: The Trouble With Rare-Disease Drugs - Bloomberg

With a flagship treatment that helps fewer than 11,000 people, how is Alexion making so much money? Kerry Owens, a doctor in Oklahoma City who specializes in kidney disorders, was stunned by the call to her mobile phone in September 2015. via Pocket

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COMPANIES

2017 Life Sciences Industry Outlook | Deloitte US

Life sciences sector growth is closely tied to global health care expenditures which, in 2017 and successive years, are expected to be fueled by increasing demand from an aging population and the burgeoning prevalence of chronic and communicable dis…

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The 2017 Market for Plasticware

Sometimes overlooked in a time of great technological advances are the workhorse products upon which every lab depends. Plasticware is one such product and an essential part of every life science laboratory. via Pocket

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Who's top-of-mind in the plasticware market? - BioInformatics

The term “brand equity” refers to the premium a company can charge for a product with a widely recognized name even when compared to an equivalent product manufactured under the same conditions. Below are the five ways we at BioInformatics LLC measu…

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Star Neuroscientist Tom Insel Leaves the Google-Spawned Verily for … a Startup? | WIRED

Add another high-profile departure to the list of people leaving Verily, the Google-spawned health science company: Thomas Insel, a neuroscientist and former head of the National Institutes of Mental Health who was leading Verily’s mental health ini…

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Prélèvement d’ADN : un paysan basque fait condamner l’Etat français - Sud Ouest.fr

Ce jeudi 22 juin, la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme a rendu son arrêt dans l’affaire opposant Jean-Michel Ayçaguer, paysan d’Ossès (Pays basque), à l’Etat français sur la question de la conservation des empreintes génétiques. via Pocket

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Vidéo sur le marais médiéval - Association Paris Historique | Les Paris DLD

Stéphane Bern a présenté sur la 2 dans son émission "Visites Privées" un reportage consacré aux vestiges du Marais médiéval. On retrouve dans cette vidéo les bénévoles de l'association "Paris Historique" qui œuvrent dans la préservation des derniers…

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Weekly Links July 3rd, 2017

2017-07-03T07:00:00.000+02:00

“MUST READ”

'Biological Teleportation' Edges Closer With Craig Venter's Digital-to-Biological Converter

The year is 2030. In a high-security containment lab, scientists gathered around a towering machine, eagerly awaiting the first look at a newly discovered bacterium on Mars. via Pocket

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That Time the TSA Found a Scientist’s 3-D-Printed Mouse Penis - The Atlantic

When Martin Cohn passed through airport security at Ronald Reagan Airport, he figured that he’d probably get some questions about the 3-D-printed model of a mouse penis in his bag. via Pocket

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Why lead-to-sales conversion rates in Life Science are so low and what to do about it | Front Line Genomics

The average marketing campaign for Life Science products achieves a lead to customer conversion rate of around 10-20% with similarly low conversion rates at each stage along the customer purchase journey. There is an enormous amount of attrition alo…

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DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

Why France Is Taking a Lesson in Culture From Silicon Valley - The New York Times

AdvertisementThe Talent ScoutsXavier Niel“What’s important is that we create successes. The risk is that in a few years, that doesn’t happen. But that risk is really null.”Roxanne Varza“When people talk about France, they don’t see it as a small-lea…

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

CRISPR Cas9 Genome Editing Explained. Experiment Design Tips

CRISPR and the CRISPR Associated system (Cas) are powerful gene editing technologies. Originally identified and characterized in bacteria, the endogenous CRISPR systems act as an RNA-based defense mechanism against invading phage DNA. via Pocket

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CRISPR Explained in 5 Levels of Difficulty | Front Line Genomics

CRISPR is a new area of biomedical science that enables gene editing and could be the key to eventually curing diseases like autism or cancer. via Pocket

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Omics! Omics!: New Life in the Sanger Market

In my bit on "I'm not dead yet" technologies recently, I included large scale Sanger sequencing. That reflects to a large degree my personal experiences and biases. via Pocket

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

Sugar industry secretly paid for favorable Harvard research

s nutrition debates raged in the 1960s, prominent Harvard nutritionists published two reviews in a top medical journal downplaying the role of sugar in coronary heart disease. via Pocket

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GE, IBM Race to Deliver on A.I. Hype in Healthcare | Xconomy

This story is part of an ongoing series on A.I. in healthcare. A companion piece today looks at the question of when A.I. might replace doctors. Artificial intelligence has a long road ahead to reach the front lines of healthcare—but it’s coming. vi…

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Crispr Makes It Clear: The US Needs a Biology Strategy, and Fast | WIRED

Biology has emerged as one of the most important technology platforms of the 21st century. With the arrival of the gene-editing technology Crispr, biology will soon converge with everyday medicine, big agriculture, and artificial intelligence to inf…

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COMPANIES

These seven researches are changing the face of biotech - San Francisco Business Times

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Boston Leaders Expect New GE CEO Flannery to Stay on Immelt’s Path | Xconomy

Jeff Immelt has struggled to please Wall Street during his nearly 16 years as General Electric’s chief executive. The question now is whether his successor, John Flannery, can deliver on Immelt’s vision while also blazing new trails and reinvigorati…

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General Electric (GE) Names Kieran Murphy as CEO of GE Healthcare

GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt announced today the appointment of Kieran Murphy as president and CEO of GE Healthcare, effective immediately. Murphy is currently president and CEO of GE Healthcare Life Sciences. Murphy succeeds John Flannery who ha…

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Scientist.com Raises $24M for “Pharma Markets” that Outsource R&D | Xconomy

San Diego’s Scientist.com set out in 2006 to disrupt part of the pharmaceutical business by providing an Amazon-like approach to the business of hiring contract research organizations (CROs). via Pocket

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

The Shelf Life of John Mackey - Texas Monthly – Featured Texas Monthly – Featured

Editor’s Note: On June 16, 2017, Whole Foods agreed to sell itself to Amazon for $13.7 billion. This is the exclusive story that led up to that momentous decision for the Austin-based grocery giant. via Pocket

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Simone Veil, Ex-Minister Who Wrote France’s Abortion Law, Dies at 89 - The New York Times

Simone Veil, an Auschwitz survivor who as health minister of France championed the 1975 law that legalized abortion in that country, and who was the first woman to be chosen president of the European Parliament, died on Friday in Paris. She was 89. …

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Are we about to witness the most unequal societies in history? | Inequality | The Guardian

Biotechnology and the rise of AI could one day divide humankind into a small class of superhumans and a huge underclass of ‘useless’ people. Once the masses lose their economic and political power, inequality levels can spiral alarmingly via Pocket

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Weekly Links April 11th, 2017

2017-04-11T08:00:00.000+02:00

“MUST READ”

· A.I. Versus M.D. - The New Yorker

One evening last November, a fifty-four-year-old woman from the Bronx arrived at the emergency room at Columbia University’s medical center with a grinding headache. Her vision had become blurry, she told the E.R. doctors, and her left hand felt num…

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

· Omics! Omics!: SageHLS: Automated uHMW DNA Preparation

Advances in optical mapping, linked reads, PacBio and nanopore sequencing are enabling generating highly contiguous large genome sequences routinely and inexpensively. However, this in turn is creating intense demand for efficiently and reliably pre…

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· Divide and Conquer: How to Setup Your First Droplet Digital PCR Experiment - Bitesize Bio

Droplet digital PCR? It’s easy. Because we’re here to guide you through it. We recently introduced you to the principles of digital PCR technology and how it differs from qPCR. via Pocket

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

· The Most Transformational Biologist of Our Era?

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· The Eaten World – The New Inquiry

A few months ago I had my gut microbiome analyzed–a $99 value–free of charge. The American Gastroenterology Association made the offer to all of its trainee members, myself included. via Pocket

· No, We Can’t Say Whether Cancer Is Mostly Bad Luck - The Atlantic

Two years ago, Time wrongly reported that “Most cancer is beyond your control.” The Guardian incorrectly wrote: “Two-thirds of adult cancers largely ‘down to bad luck’ rather than genes.” And the BBC misleadingly said: “Most cancer types ‘just bad l…

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COMPANIES

· Meet the Co-Founder who says DNA is the Next Silicon

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

· Amazon and Walmart are in an all-out price war that is terrifying America’s biggest brands - Recode

Last month, Walmart gathered some of America’s biggest household brands near its Arkansas headquarters for a tough talk. For years, Walmart had dominated the retail landscape on the back of its “Everyday Low Price” guarantee. But now, Walmart was to…

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· The Paris Innovation Review about Start-ups | Start-Up

Once again the Paris Innovation Review (formerly ParisTech Review) publishes a series of excellent articles, this time dedicated to start-ups. These are: – Companies like others? A sociological survey of French startup. – Startups Employees Perks & …

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Weekly Links March 29 th, 2017

2017-03-29T08:00:00.000+02:00

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse | Vanity Fair

tags: weeklylinks

Elon Musk is famous for his futuristic gambles, but Silicon Valley’s latest rush to embrace artificial intelligence scares him. And he thinks you should be frightened too. Inside his efforts to influence the rapidly advancing field and its proponents, and to save humanity from machine-learning overlords.

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

Omics! Omics!: plexWell: Illumina Libraries by the Plateload

The advent of so-called next generation sequencers, particularly those from Illumina, have brought the price of sequence data down dramatically. via Pocket

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

www.nytimes.com

As biological research races forward, ethical quandaries are piling up. In a report published Tuesday in the journal eLife, researchers at Harvard Medical School said it was time to ponder a startling new prospect: synthetic embryos. via Pocket

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

COMPANIES

Meet one of the most Successful Biotech Entrepreneurs in the UK

tags: weeklylinks

Jonathan Milner is a rockstar biotech entrepreneur and founder of Abcam. He is still on the board of his baby Abcam, while investing in many young startups, nurturing the British biotech ecosystem and taking part in philanthropy. Here’s my chat with him on all these topics.
Though the startup went through the usual ups and downs of product development, sales and financing, Milner and David Cleevely, another famous entrepreneur from Cambridge, have turned it into a €2B company, listed on the London Stock Exchange and with almost 1000 employees.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

[BioTCom] Focus sur le génome - YouTube

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Troisième épisode spécial focus de Biologie Tout Compris !

Steve Blank The No Excuses Culture

Getting ready for our next semester’s class, I asked my Teaching Assistant why I hadn’t seen the posters for our new class around campus. Hearing the litany of excuses that followed –“It was raining.” (The posters go inside the building.) “We still …

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Steve Blank Why Some Startups Win

If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? But he was getting uneasy that as his headcount was growing the productivity of his marketing department seemed to be rapidly declining. via Pocket

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Sorry for the Delayed Response - The New Yorker

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Weekly Links March 19 th, 2017

2017-03-20T08:00:00.000+01:00

“MUST READ”

· Are Your Sperm in Trouble? - NYTimes.com

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o these days, scientists say, an increasing proportion of sperm — now about 90 percent in a typical young man — are misshapen, sometimes with two heads or two tails.

Even when properly shaped, today’s sperm are often pathetic swimmers, veering like drunks or paddling crazily in circles. Sperm counts also appear to have dropped sharply in the last 75 years, in ways that affect our ability to reproduce.

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

· How bioinformatics tools are bringing genetic analysis to the masses : Nature News & Comment

For doctors trying to treat people who have symptoms that have no clear cause, gene-sequencing technologies might help in pointing them to a diagnosis. But the vast amount of data generated can make it hard to get to the answer quickly. via Pocket

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

· The Past, Present and Future of Genome Sequencing

Genome sequencing has taken off in recent years, and large-scale projects are leading the way. This review looks at efforts around the world. Gene sequencing has proved its usefulness as a diagnostic and prognostic tool. via Pocket

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Four Ways to Get CRISPR Reagents Into Your Cells - Bitesize Bio

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Do you need to test the effects of mutating a gene in your system? Then, CRISPR is the way to go.
There are several factors to consider when deciding how to introduce CRISPR-Cas into your cells. Here’s a list of some possible methods, and what you should consider when deciding between them:

Exponential technologies and electronic DNA detection - Next Generation Technologist

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COMPANIES

· Startups scientifiques : biotechs 1

Vous êtes ici au milieu d’une série d’articles destinée à valoriser les startups scientifiques. via Pocket

tags: IFTTT Pocket startups biotech ezratti weeklylinks

· Startups scientifiques : biotechs 2

Vous encore au milieu d’une série d’articles destinée à valoriser les startups scientifiques. La première partie expliquait pourquoi elles méritaient notre attention, comment elles reprenaient du poil de la bête et quels étaient leurs facteurs clés …

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

The GOP’s New Bill Would Seriously Disrupt Genetics Research - The Atlantic

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Last Wednesday, as reported by Stat’s Sharon Begley, a House committee approved a bill called H.R. 1313, which would change GINA’s applicability to “workplace wellness programs.

Weekly Links February 27 th, 2017

2017-02-27T08:00:00.000+01:00

“MUST READ”

Patents are destroying the soul of academic science

The soul of academic science is being destroyed, one patent at a time. via Pocket

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DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

Forbes Welcome

THE WORLD’S MOST EXTREME physical exam starts in the world’s plushest exam room, complete with a couch, a private bathroom and a teeming fruit plate. It will be my home for an entire day. First come the blood tests, vial after vial. via Pocket

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

DNA assembly and cloning in an overnight run with the BioXp[trade] 3200 system : Nature Methods : Nature Research

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

Secrets of the Human Genome - a Killian Lecture From MIT | LabRoots | Science News, Webinars and Virtual Events

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This video is presented by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it features the president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and MIT's James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award winner for 2016-2017, Professor Eric Lander, a geneticist, molecular biologist, and mathematician. He is known for playing a major role in sequencing the human genome.

COMPANIES

Which European Biotechs made it to the Billion-Euro Club in 2016?

Europe has a lot of successful Biotech companies, but which of those are worth a billion euros or more? I did a previous version of this article last year and now I explore how these have evolved. Just 9 European Biotech companies (private and publ…

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Promega introduces new Spectrum Compact CE System for high quality DNA analysis

Soon scientists will be able to perform efficient DNA analysis right at their bench. Promega Corporation has announced the development of a benchtop capillary electrophoresis (CE) instrument in collaboration with Hitachi High-Technologies Corporatio…

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Dr. J. Craig Venter's 2 Startup Companies - Nanalyze

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Manifestos and Monopolies – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

It is certainly possible that, as per recent speculation, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is preparing to run for President. It is also possible that Facebook is on the verge of failing “just like MySpace”. And while I’m here, it’s possible that UFOs e…

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The Post-Human World - The Atlantic

Famine, plague, and war. These have been the three scourges of human history. But today, people in most countries are more likely to die from eating too much rather than too little, more likely to die of old age than a great plague, and more likely …

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Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds - The New Yorker

In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. In each pair, one note had been composed by a random individual, the other by a person who had…

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Weekly Links February 20 th, 2017

2017-02-20T08:00:00.000+01:00

“MUST READ”

Sandwalk: Why is life the way it is?

Nick Lane is very good at explaining complex biology and biochemistry. He is the winner of the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Prize for 2016. Here's his lecture. It's worth watching if you want to understand the latest informed (naturalistic) specu…

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CRISPR REVOLUTION

The CRISPR patent decision: Your six takeaways

ith the Broad Institute’s big win on Wednesday in its battle over key patents on the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology, everything is now crystal clear. via Pocket

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CRISPR-Cas9 inventor Jennifer Doudna’s plans on moving forward, genetically modifying humans | TechCrunch

The decision of who owned the rights to a hotly disputed CRISPR gene editing patent came down in favor of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard today so you’d think the mood would be sour at the University of California, Berkeley, the other contend…

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Forbes Welcome

It’s been a huge two days for CRISPR, the biotechnology innovation that makes it far easier for scientists to edit DNA in living cells. via Pocket

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CRISPR | Broad Institute

The CRISPR toolbox is continuing to expand rapidly, opening new avenues for biomedical research. Since the first publications in early 2013, the Zhang lab and other researchers have engineered a number of improvements to the system. via Pocket

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

AWS Marketplace Adds Healthcare & Life Sciences Category | AWS Blog

Wilson To and Luis Daniel Soto are our guest bloggers today, telling you about a new industry vertical category that is being added to the AWS Marketplace.Check it out! via Pocket

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

Quid

tags: weeklylinks

We identified more than 1,300 companies playing in the diabetes landscape. In the network above, 9.6% of companies focus on research and drug discovery, with a whopping $2.9 billion in investment in this area.

COMPANIES

Startups scientifiques : génomique et analyses biologiques

Dans la partie précédente de cette série sur la renaissance des startups scientifiques lancée fin 2016, j’avais commencé par faire un panorama rapide et probablement très incomplet de leur écosystème en France. via Pocket

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Startups scientifiques : imagerie et medtechs opératoires

Vous êtes ici au milieu d’une série d’articles destinées à valoriser les startups scientifiques. via Pocket

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Bill Gates warns tens of millions could be killed by bio-terrorism | Technology | The Guardian

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A chilling warning that tens of millions of people could be killed by bio-terrorism was delivered at the Munich security conference by the world’s richest man, Bill Gates

Total recall: the people who never forget | Science | The Guardian

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Price was the first person ever to be diagnosed with what is now known as highly superior autobiographical memory, or HSAM, a condition she shares with around 60 other known people. She can remember most of the days of her life as clearly as the rest of us remember the recent past, with a mixture of broad strokes and sharp detail. Now 51, Price remembers the day of the week for every date since 1980; she remembers what she was doing, who she was with, where she was on each of these days

Weekly Links February 6th, 2017

2017-02-06T08:00:00.000+01:00

“MUST READ”

· www.nytimes.com

Over the years, scientists have come up with a lot of ideas about why we sleep. Some have argued that it’s a way to save energy. Others have suggested that slumber provides an opportunity to clear away the brain’s cellular waste. via Pocket

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· The secrets of people who never get sick | Life and style | The Guardian

Some lucky folk claim to never get a cold or take days off work. Can we become more like them? Every now and then one pops up at work, down the pub, in the park, outside the school gate, or in your own family’s mythology. The person who claims never…

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

· Omics! Omics!: Notes on a Conversation with 10X

Since iGenomX is perhaps the most similar technology on the market to 10X's for linked reads, I asked for some more depth here. via Pocket

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

· Human disease genomics: from variants to biology | Genome Biology | Full Text

via Pocket

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COMPANIES

· Illumina's Q4 Revenue of $619M Exceeds Expectations | San Diego Business Journal

Illumina Inc. exceeded Wall Street’s expectations Tuesday when the medtech company reported its fourth-quarter revenue was up 5 percent. Illumina brought in $619 million in Q4 revenue, up from $592 million in the same quarter the prior year. This be…

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· Omics! Omics!: Illumina Drops NeoPrep

This would seem to leave Illumina users with no small-scale automation options. via Pocket

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· Banyan Biomarkers Partnering With French Biotech Giant on TBI Diagnostic | San Diego Business Journal

Local test maker Banyan Biomarkers is partnering with bioMerieux, a French giant in biotechnology, to develop a blood test that would identify traumatic brain injury. Today, traumatic brain injury is usually diagnosed through the use of CT scans. vi…

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

· My Paris: Seduced by the Past - The New York Times

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· Amazon will build its own $1.5 billion air cargo hub | TechCrunch

Amazon is building one of the largest internal logistics and shipping businesses in the world, and if you needed any more evidence this was the case, the company just revealed that it’s investing $1. via Pocket

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· George Orwell’s ‘1984’ Is Suddenly a Best-Seller - The New York Times

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Weekly Links January 23rd , 2017

2017-01-23T08:00:00.000+01:00

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

Facebook launches incubator for data-driven startups in Paris' Station F campus | VentureBeat | Business | by Chris O'Brien

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Paris has always been a place where people come together to break new ground,” Sandberg said today in a press conference at Station F. “Now Paris has a thriving tech scene. Entrepreneurs are the engine of economic growth all over the world

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

Explainer: Structural Variation | Broad Institute

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Outsourcing Research: Should Your Experiment Spend Some Time Away from You? - Bitesize Bio

As a researcher, it’s satisfying to manage your own projects and do the bench work yourself. After all, if you don’t have experience with a technique, you’re usually expected to figure it out (with or without direct supervision). via Pocket

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

www.nytimes.com

In 2001, President George W. Bush issued an executive order banning federal funding for new sources of stem cells developed from preimplantation human embryos. The action stalled research and discouraged scientists. via Pocket

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COMPANIES

Omics! Omics!: Gen9 Vanishes

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Undoubtedly there will be additional startups in gene synthesis space. I do remain a huge believer that radically altering DNA synthesis costs would transform biology, but as I noted before radically will mean 1-2 logs from where Gen9 and Twist were pricing (and perhaps, at least for Gen9, losing money on every base but trying to make it up in volume). George Church and
others want to write entire mammalian genomes; that would be $30M a genome at $0.01/basepair

German Microscopy Tech raises funds to take over Imaging in Biology

Luxendo has raised €8M to start international sales of its unique microscopy technology aiming to take over confocal microscopes in biology research. via Pocket

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Omics! Omics!: Bio-Rad Sips Up RainDance

Monday evening brought news that Bio-Rad has further consolidated its grip on the droplet microfluidics space by acquiring RainDance Technologies for an undisclosed price. via Pocket

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Congress moves to give away national lands, discounting billions in revenue and millions of jobs | Environment | The Guardian

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Though recreation on public lands creates $646bn in economic stimulus and 6.1m jobs, Republicans are setting in motion a giveaway of Americans’ birthright

Weekly Links January 17th , 2017

2017-01-17T08:00:00.000+01:00

“MUST READ”

You Wouldn’t Be Lying About That, Would You? | In the Pipeline

Biocentury has a really good interview with John Jenkins, who’s departing the FDA this week after 15 years as director of the Office of New Drugs at the agency’s CDER (Center for Drug Evaluation and Research). via Pocket

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Rewriting the Code of Life - The New Yorker

Early on an unusually blustery day in June, Kevin Esvelt climbed aboard a ferry at Woods Hole, bound for Nantucket Island. via Pocket

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

Genetic Engineering and Crops: The CRISPR Conundrum | GEN

In both the U.S. and the EU, transgenic genetically modified (GM) crops must be approved by regulatory agencies before they can be marketed. Both the U.S. and EU have mandatory GM labeling requirements, though the structures of the U.S. via Pocket

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

www.theguardian.com

Nearly 40 years since the first ‘test-tube baby’, how close are we to editing out all of our genetic imperfections – and should we even try to do so? Comfortably seated in the fertility clinic with Vivaldi playing softly in the background, you and y…

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COMPANIES

HiSeq move over, here comes Nova! A first look at Illumina NovaSeq |

Illumina have announced NovaSeq, an entirely new sequencing system that completely disrupts their existing HiSeq user-base. In my opinion, if you have a HiSeq and you are NOT currently engaged in planning to migrate to NovaSeq, then you will be out…

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Qiagen acquires Multi Omics Company to boost its Bioinformatics services

Quiagen is entering the promising field of multi-omics data analysis with the acquisition of a bioinformatics company from the US. via Pocket

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Genomics Pioneer Craig Venter Relinquishing CEO Role at HLI | San Diego Business Journal

Local genomics legend J. Craig Venter is stepping aside from his post as chief executive officer of Human Longevity Inc., turning over the helm to former GE Healthcare executive Cynthia Collins. via Pocket

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Forbes Welcome

Grail, a San Francisco startup that aims to invent a blood test that can detect cancer early, announced this afternoon that it plans to raise $1 billion in venture capital in its second financing round, a sum that puts the biotech startup in a class…

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Hooked on Our Smartphones - The New York Times

tags: smartphones weeklylinks

“What really matters?” in life. In her enlightening new book, “The Power of Off,” Nancy Colier observes that “we are spending far too much of our time doing things that don’t really matter to us.”

Weekly Links January 16th , 2017

2017-01-16T08:00:00.000+01:00

“MUST READ”

These Foods Aren’t Genetically Modified but They Are ‘Edited’ - The New York Times

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Hundreds of acres of gene-edited crops have already been grown in several states, unencumbered by oversight or regulations. And a few people have eaten them already. “This is not Frankenfood,” said André Choulika, chief executive of Cellectis, one of the companies developing gene-edited crops.

In October, Cellectis hosted a dinner at Benoit New York, the Alain Ducasse Manhattan restaurant, and served dishes made from its gene-edited soybeans and potatoes. Guests included professors, journalists and celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris, the actor.

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

This Year in Genomics and Next-Gen Sequencing

It’s been an interesting year for the field of genomics as next-gen sequencing technologies continue to emerge, evolve, and in some cases, fade to obscurity. This year also brought some big career and life events for yours truly. Let’s look at some …

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

Why an Alzheimer's Risk Gene Still Exists - The Atlantic

Despite its dangers, the gene appears to protect the brain from parasites. When the former nurse Jamie Tyrone learned that she carried two copies of a gene called ApoE4, she “lost hope and direction,” and her “days were filled with fear, anxiety and…

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COMPANIES

Forbes Welcome

Illumina, the largest maker of DNA sequencers, is launching a new DNA sequencer with new architecture it says could push the cost of decoding a human genome from $1,000 to $100–although that decrease will not come for years. via Pocket

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Omics! Omics!: Illumina Unveils HiSeq Successor NovaSeq

At today's J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Illumina made a number of small announcements -- some new partnerships, Firefly on track for launch later this year, launch of the single cell workflow partnered with Bio-Rad. via Pocket

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Illumina’s announces new sequencers: NovaSeq Series

Illumina announced new sequencers, NovaSeq 5000 and 6000, that could potentially reduces the cost of human genome sequencing to $100 in the future. via Pocket

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Omics! Omics!: University of California Cries "Thief!" on Genia Patents

Hokay, that's plenty of law for me. I don't have any plans to hang out a Robison & Shih Tzu, Specialists in Patent Law sign; I'm done with formal schooling. Again, all we have seen is UC's side of the story. via Pocket

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Edico Genome’s Deal with Dell EMC Fits Partnership Strategy | Xconomy

San Diego’s Edico Genome is now in its fourth year as a startup, and well into the hard slog of striking partnership deals, generating revenue, and building a business. via Pocket

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Venneos launches a device for faster, better imaging of individual cells in biotech | TechCrunch

The imaging technologies used in the medical and biotech fields may be powerful and indispensable for research and diagnosis, but they can also be slow and clumsy — relics of techniques that go back decades. via Pocket

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Decline of the dentist's drill? Drug helps rotten teeth regenerate, trial shows | Science | The Guardian

Need for fillings could be reduced in future as study reveals natural ability of teeth to repair themselves can be enhanced using Alzheimer’s drug Dentists have devised a treatment to regenerate rotten teeth that could substantially reduce the need …

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Weekly Links January 9th , 2017

2017-01-09T08:00:00.000+01:00

“MUST READ”

· He may be the rightful inventor of neuroscience’s biggest breakthrough in decades. But you’ve never heard of him

The next revolution in medicine just might come from a new lab technique that makes neurons sensitive to light. The technique, called optogenetics, is one of the biggest breakthroughs in neuroscience in decades. via Pocket

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DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

· Watson and Pfizer | In the Pipeline

I have wondered several times around here about how (and if) IBM’s Watson platform is going to be able to help out with drug discovery, and it looks like we may be able to find that out. Pfizer has signed up with IBM to use the Watson technology in …

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

· Faster PCR Optimization - Bitesize Bio

So, you’ve designed PCR primers to amplify your sequence of interest, and you’re ready to go. via Pocket

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COMPANIES

· San Diego Startup Raises $2.3M to Advance Enzymatic DNA Synthesis | Xconomy

Molecular Assemblies, a San Diego startup developing a new enzymatic method for synthesizing DNA, said today it has raised $2.3 million in a seed financing round. via Pocket

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· These are 10 of the Hottest Biotech Hubs in Europe

Biotech is driving innovation and will bring some of the hottest technology of the future. To help those trying to pick one of the many biotech hubs in Europe, we’ve compiled a list of where some of the most exciting companies are. Currently, biotec…

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· Synthetic biology startup Lygos raises $13 million from OS Fund and IA Ventures to make cleaner chemicals | TechCrunch

Lygos uses microbugs to convert low-cost sugar into specialty chemicals used in manufacturing and is now releasing a technique to make malic acid, an ingredient needed in the mass production of electronics. via Pocket

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

· How Lego Became The Apple Of Toys - Fast Company - Pocket

Every September, largely unbeknownst to the rest of the company, a group of around 50 Lego employees descends upon Spain’s Mediterranean coast, armed with sunblock, huge bins of Lego bricks, and a decade’s worth of research into the ways children pl…

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· Inside Amazon's clickworker platform: How half a million people are being paid pennies to train AI - TechRepublic

Each morning when she wakes up, Kristy Milland powers up her home computer in Toronto, logs into Amazon Mechanical Turk, and waits for her computer to ding. Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), which has been around for over a decade, is an online platform…

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Weekly Links January 4th , 2017

2017-01-04T08:00:00.000+01:00

“MUST READ”

· Rewriting the Code of Life - The New Yorker

Early on an unusually blustery day in June, Kevin Esvelt climbed aboard a ferry at Woods Hole, bound for Nantucket Island. via Pocket

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· Splendor and misery of adaptation, or the importance of neutral null for understanding evolution | BMC Biology | Full Text

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DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

· MasterControl GxP Lifeline: 5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Health Care and What It Means for Quality Management

by Beth Pedersen Marketing Communications MasterControl Health care data is expected to reach a staggering 2,300 exabytes (one exabyte is equal to one billion gigabytes) in 2020. via Pocket

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

· CoreGenomics: Does the world have too many HiSeq X Tens?

The views expressed by James in this blog are his own. Any similarity to the views of anyone, or any organisation, alive, dead or undead are entirely accidental. Short Bio: James received a Molecular Biology degree and PhD from the University of Eas…

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· Omics! Omics!: Sequencing Technology Outlook, January 2017

Another year of blogging is upon us! Since the J.P. Morgan Conference starts a week from today and then before long it's time for AGBT. So if one is going to prognosticate, then there's no time to lose, as announcements could start flying at any tim…

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COMPANIES

· 90+ Artificial Intelligence Startups In Healthcare

In our quarterly analysis of companies pursuing healthcare-focused applications of AI, we reported that deals leapt from less than 10 in 2011 to 60 in 2015. So far this year (as of 8/23/2016), companies in this space have raised over 55 equity fundi…

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· Omics! Omics!: Roche Abruptly Breaks Off PacBio Partnership

This morning was a solid block of meetings, but in a pause I checked my phone and saw the shocking headline: Roche Diagnostics had suddenly terminated their partnership with Pacific Biosciences to commercialize the Sequel instrument for clinical app…

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

· The Neuroscience of Trust

Leaders know that low employee engagement is a sign of lost value—it’s clearly something they want to fix. But most of them don’t know how, so they provide random perks, hoping those will move the needle. It’s much more effective to create a culture…

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· www.nytimes.com

Late one Friday night in early November, Jun Rekimoto, a distinguished professor of human-computer interaction at the University of Tokyo, was online preparing for a lecture when he began to notice some peculiar posts rolling in on social media. via…

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Weekly Links December 12 , 2016

2016-12-12T08:00:00.000+01:00

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

· NGS-based Clinical Testing (Part I) - Our 2 SNPs...®

The adoption of genetic services is key to our ability to provide personalized medicine in the future. The goal is to better diagnose diseases, predict their outcome, and choose the best possible care option for a patient. We still have a long way t…

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· NGS-based Clinical Testing (Part II) - Our 2 SNPs...®

We have come a long way since next-generation sequencing (NGS) evolved as a set of technologies in the 1970s. The higher throughput and rapid reduction of costs associated with NGS have lead to the accelerated adoption of clinical testing that we ar…

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

· Three Steps for Setting up a Drug Screening Assay - Bitesize Bio

An anti-cancer drug or antibody drug conjugate screening assay is the first step to establish the utility of a drug candidate in killing cancer cells. Nevertheless, these assays are time consuming and tedious. via Pocket

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· Sandwalk: How many proteins in the human proteome?

Humans have about 25,000 genes. About 20,000 of these genes are protein-coding genes.1 That means, of course, that humans make at least 20,000 proteins. Not all of them are different since the number of protein-coding genes includes many duplicated …

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

· Game of Genomes: How I unearthed my ancestors through my DNA

That unusual inheritance makes the Y relatively easy to study. If a man acquires a new mutation on a Y chromosome, all his male descendants will inherit it. They can quickly identify themselves as cousins by the mutations that they share. It turns o…

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· www.nytimes.com

BETHESDA, Md. — The young surgeon was mystified. A fist-size tumor had been removed from the stomach of his patient 12 years earlier, but his doctors had not been able to cut out many smaller growths in his liver. via Pocket

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COMPANIES

Video: How is European Biotech changing the World?

tags: weeklylinks biotech

Philippe highlighted that “Europe is good at starting companies, but not at making them world leaders“. Fast-growing tech companies, including biotech, are the fuel of economic growth: “Biotech is open to anyone that has anything interesting to say“. He reckons that Europe will have to contend in the next 20-30 years with China, which is emerging as the next big player.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

This is the most dangerous time for our planet | Stephen Hawking | Opinion | The Guardian

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With not only jobs but entire industries disappearing, we must help people to retrain for a new world and support them financially while they do so. If communities and economies cannot cope with current levels of migration, we must do more to encourage global development, as that is the only way that the migratory millions will be persuaded to seek their future at home

We can do this, I am an enormous optimist for my species; but it will require the elites, from London to Harvard, from Cambridge to Hollywood, to learn the lessons of the past year. To learn above all a measure of humility.

With Station F, Paris will have the world’s biggest startup campus | TechCrunch

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Station F (formerly known as la Halle Freyssinet) is quite an ambitious project and is bound to change the face of the tech ecosystem in Paris. Financed by Xavier Niel and directed by Roxanne Varza, Station F is going be the world’s biggest startup campus with companies like Facebook and TechShop opening offices there

“We’re talking about a startup campus because we’re actually very similar to a university campus,” Varza said. “We’re expecting about one thousand startups in this space.”

Weekly Links December 9 , 2016

2016-12-09T08:00:00.000+01:00

“MUST READ”

· NeuroLogica Blog » The Times Gets it Wrong on GMOs

It is unfortunate that so many journalists begin with a narrative and then back fill the facts and points necessary to tell their narrative. via Pocket

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

· WTF is CRISPR? | TechCrunch

Say you’ve inherited a rare genetic mutation that guarantees you’ll get a certain form of cancer by the time you reach 50 years of age. And that this is most likely how you are going to die. via Pocket

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· Next-Gen DNA Sequencers: How low can they go?

The next generation has arrived, and with it, a clash of titans: Illumina, Thermo Fisher and Qiagen are all competing for the clinical market. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) companies are redefining DNA sequencing. via Pocket

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HEALTH/MEDECINE

· Meet the French CEO who wants to Break Barriers to Drug Delivery

The objective of the French biotechnology company, Vect-Horus, is to leverage its technology, VECTrans, to facilitate the delivery of drugs into the brain and other organs. via Pocket

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COMPANIES

· Science Exchange Acquires OnDeckBiotech to Expand Scientific Services Marketplace in Biotech Industry

tags: science exchange scientist weeklylinks

· Google Docs for life sciences startup Benchling raises $7 million in growth funding from Thrive Capital – TechCrunch

Benchling, a biotech company out of Y Combinator providing cloud-based software for researchers, tells TechCrunch it has raised $7 million in growth funding to continue creating tools to help the science community access research from big pharma and…

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· Biotech startup Zymergen nabs $130 million from Softbank | TechCrunch

Zymergen, a Bay Area startup creating all sorts of materials from genetically altered microbes, just raised $130 million in Series B funding from Softbank. For those unfamiliar, the company makes crazy new materials out of genetically altered microb…

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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

· As Work Changes, Leadership Development Has to Keep Up

As work itself is changing, some of the basic tenets of leadership development are being challenged. The very idea of leading people in jobs is changing with the democratization of work and the continued advance of digital technology. via Pocket

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Weekly Links December 5 , 2016

2016-12-05T08:00:00.000+01:00

“MUST READ”

· The Cure for Cancer Is Data—Mountains of Data | WIRED

A few years ago Eric Schadt met a woman who had cancer. It was an aggressive form of colon cancer that had come on quickly and metastasized to her liver. via Pocket

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TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

· WATCH: Genome editing with CRISPR/Cas9 | Front Line Genomics

The action of CRISPR-Cas9 has been described in a wide variety of different ways in the media. via Pocket

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· One of our reporters tried to do CRISPR. He failed miserably | Science | AAAS

I speak biology fluently, but the molecular complexities of the novel genome-editing tool called CRISPR left me as befuddled as when I peruse descriptions of the inflationary universe. via Pocket

tags: IFTTT Pocket weeklylinks

· How to Cherry Pick Your Primary Antibody - Bitesize Bio

How do you pick which antibody you should use in your assay? If you’re starting a new assay and need an antibody for the job, or if your assay isn’t working and you suspect that your antibody could be at fault, then selecting a new antibody from the…

tags: IFTTT Pocket weeklylinks

HEALTH/MEDECINE

· America's drug problem : Nature Biotechnology : Nature Research

troubling are the prices of biologics. There is no doubt that these drugs are expensive to conceive, trial and manufacture, compared with traditional small-molecule drugs. But with strong patent monopolies and weak competition after patent expiry, brand biologics are the drug industry's gift that keeps on giving. An analysis of the top-selling drugs worldwide shows how the rise of biologics has reshaped drug salestags: IFTTT Pocket weeklylinks

· Why billion-dollar biotech deals are often just a mirage

It was a good day for UniQure, a Dutch biotech company at work on gene therapies for rare diseases. A big pharma company had just made a billion-dollar investment in its future. Or so the headlines blared. via Pocket

tags: IFTTT Pocket weeklylinks

COMPANIES

· Symbiosis with the Biohub | LinkedIn

Today, my wife Michelle and I are announcing a $20 million commitment to support the work of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a new laboratory space in San Francisco where researchers and clinical scientists from Stanford, UCSF, and UC Berkeley wi…

tags: IFTTT Pocket weeklylinks

· Cogito closes $15M Series B to improve customer support with science | TechCrunch

The MIT Media Lab spin-off is applying the principles of behavioral science to call centers around the world to improve customer experiences. Cogito compares the characteristics of a current conversation to those of successful historical calls. Using traits like volume, pauses and speed, Cogito makes recommendations to agents in the form of gentle text nudges.

tags: customer experience weeklylink

· Edico Genome to Partner With Amazon Web Services | San Diego Business Journal

La Jolla’s tech startup Edico Genome Inc. has landed a partnership with Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon that offers a suite of cloud computing services.

The partnership will allow Edico’s Dragen software to be available on Amazon’s virtual servers, helping the company to ramp up processing power. This allows customers to analyze a genome quickly, harnessing the power of Amazon’s servers so they can forgo physical hardware taking up floorspace.

tags: edico weeklylinks

· Italy has new €100M Factory for Biobased Butanediol - Labiotech.eu

With an industry worth €3.5Bn, butanediol is an important chemical intermediate. Novamont has recently opened the first industrial plant to produce bio-butanediol from sugars, using engineered E. coli. via Pocket

tags: IFTTT Pocket weeklylinks

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

· Leonard Cohen Makes It Darker - The New Yorker

When Leonard Cohen was twenty-five, he was living in London, sitting in cold rooms writing sad poems. He got by on a three-thousand-dollar grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. This was 1960, long before he played the festival at the Isle of W…

tags: IFTTT Pocket weeklylinks

Weekly Links October 10 , 2016

2016-10-10T08:00:00.000+02:00

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

· The Microbiome - Basic and applied research about microbiomes

The Microbiome Portal wants to provide you with new information about the basic and applied research that is being done now about the microbiomes. via Pocket

tags: IFTTT Pocket weeklylinks

· Le Nobel de chimie 2016 avait tout faux | {Sciences²}

L‘attribution du prix Nobel de chimie 2016 à un trio comprenant Jean-Pierre Sauvage a déclenché l’habituel flot de félicitations des responsables politiques. via Pocket

tags: IFTTT Pocket

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

· How to Choose the Right Pipette Tips for your Experiment - Bitesize Bio

Whatever the technique, it is essential to have the correct experimental setup to let you verify that you are measuring what you think you are measuring. And PCR is no different – you can’t conclude anything concrete from your results unless you hav…

tags: IFTTT Pocket

HEALTH/MEDECINE

· Color Genomics raises $45 million to provide cheaper genetic tests that detect cancer risk | TechCrunch

Othman Laraki and Elad Gil were sitting on Twitter’s roof deck after their previous company Mixer Labs had been acquired. Gil had brought a small hard drive with him — which happened to contain data on his genome being sequenced — and Laraki wanted …

tags: IFTTT Pocket

COMPANIES

· Novartis Revamps | In the Pipeline

Novartis has done a big reshuffle of its R&D structure, but what’s not clear is if it’s one of those reshuffles that ends up with fewer jobs than it started with. via Pocket

tags: IFTTT Pocket

· CoreGenomics: The future of Illumina according to @chrissyfarr

tags: IFTTT Pocket

· Illumina, Secret Giant Of DNA Sequencing, Is Bringing Its Tech To The Masses | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

It would raise the stakes even higher, but that didn't stop Jay Flatley, Illumina's then chief executive, from sending in vials of his own saliva and blood to the company's newly opened lab. via Pocket

tags: IFTTT Pocket

· Breakthrough Gene Technology Attracts Investors Amid Patent Dispute - WSJ

Last month, Bayer AG opened the doors on a $335 million joint venture with Crispr Therapeutics to develop therapies using a new gene-editing tool. Later this year, rival Editas Medicine Inc. via Pocket

tags: IFTTT Pocket

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

· Is the Digital Economy Much Less Competitive Than We Think It Is? -

Maurice E. Stucke from the University of Tennessee Knoxville and Ariel Ezrachi of Oxford University explain how big data and artificial intelligence can be used to facilitate collusion and potentially harm consumers. The first part of a two-part int…

tags: IFTTT Pocket weeklylinks

· How Can Antitrust Be Used to Protect Competition in the Digital Marketplace? -

tags: weeklylinks antitrust

· Yelling at Amazon’s Alexa - The New Yorker

The first time I met Alexa, the A.I. robot voice inside the wine-bottle-size speaker known as the Amazon Echo, I was at my friends’ house, in rural New England. “Currently, it is seventy-five degrees,” she told us, and assured us that it would not r…

tags: IFTTT Pocket

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Weekly Links September 30 , 2016

2016-09-30T08:00:00.000+02:00

“MUST READ”

Do women stay cooler under stress than men? | Life and style | The Guardian

Do women stay cooler under stress than men? Men and women make very different decisions under pressure. But who loses their head? Mara Mather and researchers at the University of Southern California were curious to see if stress changes how people m…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

Beyond CRISPR: A guide to the many other ways to edit a genome : Nature News & Comment

tags: weeklylinks

The CRISPR–Cas9 tool enables scientists to alter genomes practically at will. Hailed as dramatically easier, cheaper and more versatile than previous technologies, it has blazed through labs around the world, finding new applications in medicine and basic research.

But for all the devotion, CRISPR–Cas9 has its limitations. It is excellent at going to a particular location on the genome and cutting there, says bioengineer Prashant Mali at the University of California, San Diego. “But sometimes your application of interest demands a bit more.”

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

DIY CRISPR Kit – Door to Democratization or Disaster? - Zone in With ZonZone in With Zon

tags: weeklylinks

It is evident that molecular biology has also undergone democratization based on emergence of so-called “do it yourself” (DIY) advocates of biology (DIY-BIO), which on the surface seems like a good thing. But, as I’ll expand upon below, DIY-BIO has morphed in a way which has elevated concerns that a well-intentioned DIY aficionado anywhere can now access genetically powerful CRISPR reagents that might inadvertently unleash a harmful home-made organism.

CoreGenomics: Comparison of DNA library prep kits by the Sanger Institute

Comparison of DNA library prep kits by the Sanger Institute The views expressed by James in this blog are his own. Any similarity to the views of anyone, or any organisation, alive, dead or undead are entirely accidental. Short Bio: James received a…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

COMPANIES

In Battle Between Promega and Shareholders, Linton Heads to Court | Xconomy

tags: weeklylinks

To say that Bill Linton has a long-term vision for Promega, the Fitchburg, WI-based biotech business he founded in 1978 and continues to lead as chairman and CEO, would qualify as an understatement. In 2013, he told the Isthmus newspaper that he was working to arrange a corporate structure that would allow Promega “to celebrate its 100-year anniversary as a private company, as an independent company.”

I tried the Amazon for labs and it makes life way easier!

I tried the Amazon for labs, and it makes life way easier! Ordering a kit for an experiment could quickly become a nightmare. There are an incredible amount of suppliers out there who are selling similar products that could greatly vary in price and…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks

The sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960s to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead, newly released historical documents show.

The internal sugar industry documents, recently discovered by a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, suggest that five decades of research into the role of nutrition and heart disease, including many of today’s dietary recommendations, may have been largely shaped by the sugar industry.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Weekly Links September 23 , 2016

2016-09-23T08:00:00.000+02:00

“MUST READ”

Lies, damn lies, and CRISPR: the legal battle escalates

tags: weeklylinks

Key patents on the CRISPR technology were awarded to the Broad and Harvard University based on Zhang’s research developing a CRISPR system that edited mouse and human genes — many of them at the same time, Zhang and his team reported in a 2013 paper. The University of California is challenging those patents on behalf of UC Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna and one of her key collaborators on a seminal 2012 paper, which described editing the test tube DNA using CRISPR.

www.nytimes.com

A Cautionary Tale of ‘Stem Cell Tourism’ The surgeon gasped when he opened up his patient and saw what was in his spine. It was a huge mass, filling the entire part of the man’s lower spinal column. “The entire thing was filled with bloody tissue, a…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

www.nytimes.com

The Parasite Underground When Vik was in his late 20s, blood started appearing in his stool. He found himself rushing to the bathroom as many as nine times a day, and he quit his job at a software company. He received a diagnosis of severe ulcerativ…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

For biotech CEO Rachel Haurwitz, CRISPR is big business

For biotech CEO Rachel Haurwitz, CRISPR is big business BERKELEY, Calif. — The question on the test was about CRISPR, but Rachel Haurwitz, then a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, botched it. She had never heard the term.

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

Illumina Sequencing Versus Other Sequencing Methods

tags: weeklylinks

The future of personalized medicine depends on affordable DNA sequencing. In the race for the $1,000 genome, several sequencer manufacturers are working on making equipment that can sequence DNA and RNA faster and more accurately. But so far, only one company – San Diego, California-based Illumina – has US FDA regulatory approval to use its sequencer in the clinic.

The Basics of Running a Chromatography Column - Bitesize Bio

tags: weeklylinks

Column chromatography is a common technique used to separate individual compounds from a mixture. You can use column chromatography on both a small or large scale to isolate and purify material for use on a later experiment.

If you are new to column chromatography or just want a refresher, then read on for a quick description of the basic process.

Explaining Genomics - No More Lies! | Front Line Genomics

Explaining Genomics – No More Lies! In presenting simple explanations, are we setting ourselves up for a fall? “I have a confession to make. We’ve been lying to you.” Those were the words my school biology teacher (hello Mr. Boddington!) chose to op…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

Get that Genotyping PCR to Work EVERY TIME - Bitesize Bio

Get that Genotyping PCR to Work EVERY TIME Say you just joined a lab and have been assigned your very own project to work on. As part of your new responsibilities, you have to breed and maintain the mutant (or transgenic) mouse line which you will b…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

HEALTH/MEDECINE

Europe's largest biomedical research facility opens for business | Front Line Genomics

tags: weeklylinks

The Francis Crick Institiute in London, the biggest biomedical research institute in Europe, has officially opened its doors for research this week. Scientists have begun to move into the £650 million facility and are taking up residence in their new labs

Research at the Crick aims to discover how and why disease develops in order to find new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat conditions such as cancer, heart disease and stroke, infections and neurodegenerative conditions like motor neurone disease.

What Is Immunotherapy? The Basics on These Cancer Treatments - The New York Times

tags: weeklylinks

Some of the most promising advances in cancer research in recent years involve treatments known as immunotherapy. These advances are spurring billions of dollars in investment by drug companies, and are leading to hundreds of clinical trials. Here are answers to some basic questions about this complex and rapidly evolving field.

New clue to how lithium works in the brain

New clue to how lithium works in the brain Since the 1970s, U.S. doctors have prescribed lithium to treat patients with bipolar disorder. While the drug has a good success rate, scientists are still unsure exactly how it achieves its beneficial effe…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

COMPANIES

Cepheid, Propelled By Seattle Chemists, Sells to Danaher for $4B | Xconomy

tags: weeklylinks

Sunnyvale, CA-based Cepheid (NASDAQ: CPHD) has been scaling up its testing service for more than a decade, now offering a variety of molecular-based diagnostic tests for maladies such as hospital-acquired infections, sexually transmitted infections, and infectious diseases like the flu or meningitis. Since its founding in 1996, Cepheid has installed more than 11,000 of its machines, called GeneXpert Systems, which automate the testing process.

Bioz pulls in $3 million from Esther Dyson, others, hopes to become Google for life science research | TechCrunch

tags: weeklylinks

The Palo Alto startup does this by offering up article extracts from published science papers using natural language processing. The Bioz platform helps researchers select products, plan experiments, write papers, apply for grants and collaborate, speeding up experimentation and drug discovery.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Monsanto Whistle-Blower: $22 Million Richer, but Not Satisfied - The New York Times

tags: weeklylinks

Winning isn’t everything.

So says the man who recently received $22 million after bringing to light multiyear accounting violations at Monsanto, the agribusiness and chemicals giant. Even though his is the second-largest award issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission under its five-year-old program to encourage whistle-blowers to come forward (after a $30 million award in September 2014), it feels, he told me, like something of a hollow victory.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Weekly Links September 19 , 2016

2016-09-19T08:00:00.000+02:00

“MUST READ”

The unsung heroes of CRISPR : Nature News & Comment

tags: CRISPR weeklylinks voyage

For Wiedenheft, the key to survival has been seclusion. When he struck out from Doudna's lab, he opted for a return to Montana State University in Bozeman, where he did his PhD, over an offer from a larger, better-known institution. “At the end of the day, the opportunities for solitude and being outdoors make me more creative and a better scientist,” he says. But like other young scientists who graduate from powerhouse labs, he can't help but wonder how different life might have been if accolades in biomedical science were given to the first authors on a paper, rather than the last. Now and then, he admits, he doesn't feel quite appreciated enough. “Some days it matters, some days it doesn't.”

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

Reviewing CRISPR, the Scientific Discovery of the Century

tags: weeklylinks

By this point, you can’t have escaped hearing about CRISPR. First discovered in the 1980’s, the repeated sequences and their function in bacterial defense systems remained a mystery until almost 10 years ago, when it was hailed as the biggest scientific discovery of the century. Since then, scientists have leveraged the adaptable, heritable mechanism to develop the most powerful gene-editing technology to date, known as CRISPR-Cas9.

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

InCellis - Smart Cell Imaging System - YouTube

New generation of cell imagerInCellis is a unique cell imager developed to generate publication-quality images of cells, on tissue slide or in cell culture.The InCellis provides coloured images in brightfield, phase contrast and fluorescence. In a m…

tags: IFTTT Pocket
This video explains exactly how genetic engineering will change everything forever | Front Line Genomics

tags: weeklylinks

ust as no one in the 80s believed that computers would one day govern every aspect of our lives, today most of us still don’t believe that gene editing will change very much.

This new video from Kurzgesagt – In a Nushell takes a look at the history of genetic engineering, the advent of CRISPR, and how this will impact the future.

The Essential PCR Troubleshooting Checklist - Bitesize Bio

tags: weeklylinks

Routine PCR? Let’s be honest, there’s no such thing. Even with the simplest PCR reaction things can go wrong, so you need to have a good checklist of ideas for PCR troubleshooting and rectifying the problem. Today I have brainstormed all of the ways I can think of to approach problems with standard PCR reactions.

What is CRISPR? - YouTube

tags: weeklylinks CRISPR

Basic Mechanisms of Cloning, excerpt 2 | MIT 7.01SC Fundamentals of Biology - YouTube

tags: weeklylinks

Gel Electrophoresis - YouTube

tags: weeklylinks

Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) | MIT 7.01SC Fundamentals of Biology - YouTube

tags: weeklylinks

Simply Cloning - Chapter 1 - Planning - YouTube

tags: weeklylinks

HEALTH/MEDECINE

Seeking to Join Editas, Intellia, CRISPR Tx Makes Long Awaited IPO Push | Xconomy

tags: weeklylinks

Investors hoping to buy into the vast, yet still unproven drugmaking potential of the gene editing system CRISPR-Cas9 will soon have three different companies to choose from. CRISPR Therapeutics filed for an IPO on Friday, meaning it could soon join Boston-area rivals Editas Medicine and Intellia Therapeutics in the expanding club of publicly traded CRISPR-Cas9 drug developers.

The World of Microbes (II): The Gut Microbiome in Health and Disease - Bitesize Bio

tags: weeklylinks

Much research efforts are being put into studying the gut microbiome right now because we realize it is super important. In both the inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) and in Clostridium difficile infections, the right mirobiome plays a crucial role in recovery. This article will focus on the gut because there are some awesome examples of modern medicine at work. Let’s first take a brief overview of the microbiome in the gut.

COMPANIES

Life Sciences Marketplace Quartzy Raises $17 Million To Build Up The Supply Side | TechCrunch

Life Sciences Marketplace Quartzy Raises $17 Million To Build Up The Supply Side Quartzy, a lab supplies marketplace, announced it has closed a $17 million round in Series B financing to help the startup build up the supply of lab equipment offered …

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

Overview — iLab Solutions

tags: weeklylinks solutions

iLab offers a suite of web-based tools for academic research management. The functionality includes core facility service request management, enhanced sample management functionality, equipment reservation and usage tracking, billing and invoicing, reporting, and lab requisitioning and spend tracking tools. The system also allows each user a consolidated view of their recent activity in the system as well as the ability to search across all equipment, services and cores in the system.

Illumina shrugs off takeover talk to push on with £60m Cambridge expansion | Business Weekly | Technology News | Business news | Cambridge and the East of England

tags: illumina weeklylinks

Work on a new £60 million facility at Granta Park – set to employ up to 500 staff – could begin late this week or early next, Business Weekly can disclose.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

G.E., the 124-Year-Old Software Start-Up - The New York Times

tags: innovation GE weeklylinks

Yet all of this exposes G.E. to new competition beyond its traditional rivals like Rockwell Automation, Siemens and United Technologies. Tech giants, including Amazon, Cisco, Google, IBM and Microsoft also have their eye on the industrial internet market, as do a bevy of start-ups.

There is precedent for trouble in other industries, of course. Google and Facebook transformed media and advertising, Amazon redefined retailing, and Uber applied an entirely new business model to taxis, which hadn’t changed much in generations.

Patagonia’s Philosopher-King - The New Yorker

tags: weeklylinks

How Yvon Chouinard turned his eco-conscious, anti-corporate ideals into the credo of a successful clothing company.

· Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Weekly Links June 24 , 2016

2016-06-24T08:00:00.000+02:00

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

www.nytimes.com

Scientists Announce HGP-Write, Project to Synthesize the Human Genome Scientists on Thursday formally announced the start of a 10-year project aimed at vastly improving the ability to chemically manufacture DNA, with one of the goals being to synthe…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

Plan to Fabricate a Genome Raises Questions on Designer Humans

Plan to Fabricate a Genome Raises Questions on Designer Humans A proposal by a group of scientists and businesspeople to synthesize a human genome from scratch is attracting sharp criticism for dodging the big ethical questions such a step raises.

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

Get that Genotyping PCR to Work EVERY TIME - Bitesize Bio

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

Cell Culture is No Longer Flat: Three Dimensional Cell Culture - Bitesize Bio

Cell Culture is No Longer Flat: Three Dimensional Cell Culture Three dimensional cell culture mimics the extracellular matrix (ECM) that offers the structure and support for cells in vivo, thus creating the complex architecture and network required …

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

COMPANIES

Not So Verily | In the Pipeline

Not So Verily The folks at Stat clearly have some good sources inside Google’s Verily startup. They ran a story back in March about problems with the CEO (blogged about here), and now they’re back with more opinion from within.

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

Exit Interview: Lita Nelsen on MIT Tech Transfer, Startups & Culture | Xconomy

Exit Interview: Lita Nelsen on MIT Tech Transfer, Startups & Culture MIT’s approach to nurturing entrepreneurship has changed a lot over the past 50 years.

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Surprisingly Simple Ways You Can Trick Your Brain Into Focusing | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

Surprisingly Simple Ways You Can Trick Your Brain Into Focusing What separates strategic, visionary thinkers from the rest of us? And why do we tend to worry about our ability to remember names—or where our keys are—rather than loss of cognitive mem…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Weekly Links June 20 , 2016

2016-06-20T08:00:00.000+02:00

“MUST READ”

www.nytimes.com

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION

www.nytimes.com

Scientists Hope to Cultivate an Immune System for Crops The world’s crops face a vast army of enemies, from fungi to bacteria to parasitic animals. Farmers have deployed pesticides to protect their plants, but diseases continue to ruin a sizable por…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

www.nytimes.com

Scientists Find Form of Crispr Gene Editing With New Capabilities Just a few years ago, Crispr was a cipher — something that sounded to most ears like a device for keeping lettuce fresh. Today, Crispr-Cas9 is widely known as a powerful way to edit g…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

www.nytimes.com

Emmanuelle Charpentier’s Still-Busy Life After Crispr Emmanuelle Charpentier — one of three scientists credited with starting the gene editing revolution — willingly turned her life over to science.

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

Cloning Methods: 5 Different Ways to Assemble - Bitesize Bio

Cloning Methods: 5 Different Ways to Assemble Over the past few decades molecular biologists have developed procedures to simplify and standardize cloning processes, allowing vast arrays of artificial DNA structures to be more easily assembled. Are …

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

Antibody anarchy: A call to order : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

tags: antibody weeklylinks

Sometimes it seems easier to hire a detective than to order a specific antibody,” concludes an overview of antibody portals⁵.

HEALTH/MEDECINE

‘Liquid’ Cancer Test Offers Hope for Alternative to Painful Biopsies - NYTimes.com

‘Liquid’ Cancer Test Offers Hope for Alternative to Painful Biopsies CHICAGO — A blood test to detect cancer mutations produced results that generally agree with those of an invasive tumor biopsy, researchers reported, heralding a time when diagnosi…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

COMPANIES

Investors Look to Improving Response Time of Global Life Science Reagents Market against Increased Disease Prevalence | Medgadget

Investors Look to Improving Response Time of Global Life Science Reagents Market against Increased Disease Prevalence A new research report pegs the global life science reagents market at US$25.73 bn in 2019. The market will be able to achieve this …

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

SciQuest Set to go Private in $509M Deal with Accel-KKR | Xconomy

SciQuest Set to go Private in $509M Deal with Accel-KKR Software firm SciQuest is set to go private again in a cash deal that values the company at about $509 million. Private equity firm Accel-KKR is paying $17.75 per share to acquire all of the co…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Think the millennials have it tough? For Generation K life’s even harsher | World news | The Guardian

Think millennials have it tough? For 'Generation K', life is even harsher After our in-depth investigation of the issues faced by young adults, Noreena Hertz takes a look at the lives of today’s teenagers, after interviewing 2,000 of them in the pas…

tags: Pocket weeklylinks

The End of Reflection - The New York Times

tags: weeklylinks

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.