This thread is probably a good place to point to perhaps the best resource on the web for personal genomics today, the Genomes Unzipped blog http://www.genomesunzipped.org/
These are early days in personal genomics, so it's great to see others jumping in. Hopefully they all do so with some awareness, and folks like Genomes Unzipped do a great job in creating that awareness, and never forgetting that there is difficult, evolving science behind our understanding.
This is a question asked out of ignorant curiousity: what, if any, are the intellectual property implications of releasing genomic information into the public domain? Does doing so preclude the patenting yet un-patented genetic sequences published in that genome?
A number of human genomes are public domain via the human genome project and 1000 genomes project, etc. The part that needs to be resolved is the bit about genes and disease implications. A recent case overturned Myriad's patents on BRCA1 and BRCA2 [1]. On the other hand, I believe it's still OK to patent signatures corresponding to a diagnostic etc (not 100% sure).
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This thread is probably a good place to point to perhaps the best resource on the web for personal genomics today, the Genomes Unzipped blog http://www.genomesunzipped.org/
The authors have not only released their genetic information into the public domain (http://www.genomesunzipped.org/data), but also developed a custom genome browser (http://www.genomesunzipped.org/jbrowse), have an API, and a github repo for code they will release (https://github.com/genomesunzipped/genomesunzipped).
These are early days in personal genomics, so it's great to see others jumping in. Hopefully they all do so with some awareness, and folks like Genomes Unzipped do a great job in creating that awareness, and never forgetting that there is difficult, evolving science behind our understanding.
This is a question asked out of ignorant curiousity: what, if any, are the intellectual property implications of releasing genomic information into the public domain? Does doing so preclude the patenting yet un-patented genetic sequences published in that genome?
A number of human genomes are public domain via the human genome project and 1000 genomes project, etc. The part that needs to be resolved is the bit about genes and disease implications. A recent case overturned Myriad's patents on BRCA1 and BRCA2 [1]. On the other hand, I believe it's still OK to patent signatures corresponding to a diagnostic etc (not 100% sure).
1. http://www.genomicslawreport.com/index.php/2010/03/30/pigs-f...