E.coli Doesn't Like Diets Either, At Least Genomic Ones

Another interesting preprint that fits several recent themes - genome minimization, discontinuation of products - comes from a Japanese group that reports on significantly reducing the genome of E.coli.  They tried for 1.7Mb but ended up settling - for now - with a 2.3Mb genome.  That's only about half the size of the strain they started with, but not at all a small genome.  

Shredding Genomes: Establishing Plausible Deletability

There's an interesting new preprint from Jay Shendure's lab which introduces the technique of Shred-Seq, which is a Cas3-driven approach to generating large deletions across a large eukaryotic genome.  By creating diverse collections of deletions, Shred-Seq enables identifying hidden non-coding sequences of functional importance.

The Commercial End for Fluidigm Technology?

Last week brought news that Standard Biotools, which is what Fluidigm morphed into, is being acquired by Treeline Biosciences, a drug developer.  The deal values Standard at about its cash position - and Treeline made it immediately clear this is a reverse merger to grab the cash and in effect go public by also grabbing Standard's stock listing.  What Treeline has made very clear is that they have absolutely no interest in is Standard's existing tools portfolio.

Long Reads for Rare Diseases Hits New England Journal of Medicine

Alexander Hoischen and colleagues have a brief piece in New England Journal of Medicine that published early this morning, in conjunction with the European Society of Human Genomics (ESHG) meeting.  I'm now in the thrall of ESHG FOMO - I attended last year in part because it was immediately after London Calling and it seemed silly not to extend my trip (plus Alex had asked me personally to go), but this year I reluctantly decided my travel load was getting high and decided to make only one transatlantic flight in the May-June timeframe.  Hopefully I picked the right one.  The piece is the latest installment of a long running program to demonstrate that long read sequencing, specifically PacBio HiFi sequencing, can replace a battery of older tests when trying to diagnose rare genetic diseases.

Craig Venter Reflections: Building & Redesigning Genomes

The last bit of Craig Venter's career a followed, often a bit green with envy, was his work to build genomes.  This all revolved around the Mycoplasma genitalium they had knocked out a genome as a victory lap after completing the first bacterial genome.  This bug is held up as the bacterium with the smallest genome which can be grown in a defined medium.  To first reconstruct an entire genome, with watermarking sequences to prove it was done, required pushing every limit of the existing gene synthesis cloning technology.  An effort so intense, that collaborator Dan Gibson became a verb! (See that gene cluster we want?  We'll Gibson it into a BAC vector.")

Craig Venter Reflections: Human Genome

Few bombshells have hit genomics like the day in May 1998 when Craig Venter and Applied Biosystems announced he would be launching Celera Genomics to sequence the human genome by a complete shotgun approach.  A couple of colleagues at Millennium had just announced they were leaving to form a contract research organization which would perform high throughput sequencing on demand - they were certainly rocked back on their heels (though not blown over; Orion Genomics remains successful to this day with a focus on palm oil genomes).  The public project was also rattled - Celera was promising to deliver a private genome much sooner.  In some ways, it was the EST brouhaha all over again - except with important twists.

Craig Venter Reflections: Small Genomes

In the early 1990s, Craig Venter left the NIH over disputes around the patenting of ESTs.  Investors backed him, but then William Haseltine basically pushed him out of direct operation of Human Genome Sciences (HGS) and Venter went to start The Institute for Genome Research, far better known as TIGR.  TIGR would attract an amazing array of talent both wet lab and dry lab - a pattern that Venter had established.  I believe it was around then that Venter attracted both Clyde Hutchinson and Hamilton Smith to TIGR - two giants of microbiology (Smith had a Nobel Prize!), and they would collaborate with him for the rest of their lives.  HGS would have human biology to themselves, but TIGR was free to explore other parts of life domain.  And it would be in the sequencing of microbes that Venter and TIGR would radically shake up a world that, as I reviewed in the previous piece, was debating how many levels of physical maps to build.