Element's Curious Patentsieg

Last week news broke that Element Biosciences had won a patent lawsuit against Illumina, and that it affected MiSeq.  MiSeq???? How did a patent battle in 2026 affect a platform launched nearly a decade and a half ago?  And which had been launched about five years before Element incorporated.  Which is being put out to pasture, though the MiSeqDx version What witchcraft is this?  I've done limited digging - I really dislike trying to dig through patents - and it is a strange case.

Fiber-Seq: Plasmids Model Chromosomes Well

A recent publication in Molecular Cell involving Fiber-Seq caught my attention, though I've since discovered this preprinted over a year ago.  One of the challenges in exploring the effects of genetic variations is the cost & effort to generate collections of variation which can be profiled by available methods.  This paper explores using Fiber-Seq on transfected plasmids and finds that, with important caveats, transfected plasmids evoke the same patterns of chromatin protection as the corresponding nuclear DNA.  This opens up the possibility of exploring large sets of variants for their effect on chromatin structure and either feeding that data into models or using it to understand clinical non-coding variation.  Or why not both?

The Simulator That Isn't There

Okay, this is one of those cases where I kvetch about other people not having built the tools I want to use - perhaps a bit of a insufferably egotistical position.  I mean, what gives me the chutzpah to do that?  My title, according to me, is "Automation Visioneer", so that gives me the right - though again, self-given title, self-given right.  But I hope you'll bear with me, because I think (there again, me! me! me!) it is an interesting observation on a curious gap in the software world - one that could make a very interesting project for someone so inclined. Oh, and this is one of the "a bit of promoting the product" entries - which means I get to blog on company time.

Countable Labs Raises Funds, Heads to Clinic

I caught up by teleconference recently with Countable Labs CEO Giovanna Prout, fresh off Countable Labs' $26M equity fundraising - a round which was oversubscribed.  Top on my agenda: what is Prout's vision to turn that money into products.  And how will Countable balance building molecular tools vs. applying those tools to clinical problems?