Human genetics

Recently I attended the Broad Institute Retreat and a local symposium on human genetics with many talks covering the latest genome-wide association studies of human diseases (e.g. autism, multiple sclerosis), further reinforcing my developing belief that the era of personal genomics is arriving, and at a much faster pace than I had anticipated. Several companies have started offering services to provide personal genetic information to individuals (e.g. 23andme, Navigenics); see the latest coverage in the New York Times. Projects are underway to fully sequence 1000 individual human genomes (check out the Venter and Watson genomes, the first two personal genomes sequenced by Venter's institute and 454, respectively). George Church, a professor at Harvard, and his team are gearing up to sequence the coding portion (i.e. the ~1% in the human genome that is coding for proteins) of many more individuals while collecting diverse phenotypes at the same time; the main goal is to link genes to traits.

While linking genes to traits has been going on for decades in the field of genetics, the ability to do it across the entire human genome only became a possibility in the past several years. A major challenge is to accurately communicate the results of these and future studies to the public. As a motivation to read more papers in the area, I will start to blog on human genetics. I will start from the basics, e.g. DNA, chromosomes, genetic variations, how association studies are designed, etc; and discuss the results and implications of the latest studies. I hope this exercise will further educate myself and my readers. Stay tuned!

Anniversaries

This is the week of anniversaries. Princess Diana died 10 years ago; and it was also 10 years ago that I arrived at Silicon Valley as an intern with Netscape and experienced the early boom of the Internet era (also was my first time living in the US for an extended period); my wedding anniversary is coming up later this week; and since I just sent off my good friend Marei, who is leaving for good to Chicago and then Germany, this week will be her Boston-departure anniversary.

For me, anniversaries are bittersweet as they often remind me that life is fleeting. It is also when nostalgia kicks in. The glowing Boston sunshine outside my window brings me back to 189 Buckthorn Way in Menlo Park, California. This is where my good friend Thomas and I first stayed during our 1997 Netscape internship. Those four months were one of the happiest times of my life. We met a great number of inspiring and thoughtful friends. I still remember vividly the couple who lent us their mattress; and how Sandy, who has since become one of my best friends, took us around to cheap, but great, Chinese food. It was also when my burgeoning desire to get into research was encouraged. The unique decorations of cubicles at Netscape were eye-opening, for the first time I saw that computer geeks can also be great artists.

Looking forward 10 years, I wonder how Marei's time in Boston will be remembered by her and by me? Just in case, I will backup some of the most precious memories here:

• Braving the morning cold to get BSO College Card tickets
• Plum Island
• Moving to 172 Central
• Moving to 210 Summer
• Movie Nights at Amit's
• NH Hiking Trips
• DC
• Food, food, and food