I got my autosomal DNA analysed for $50 by FTDNA recently. Not a full gene sequence though. You get NGS tests for about $400 now.

---

The first sequencing of the whole human genome in 2003 cost roughly $2.7 billion, but DNA sequencing giant Illumina has now unveiled a new machine that the company says is “expected one day” to order up your whole genome for less than $100.

Illumina’s CEO Francis deSouza showed off the machine, called the NovaSeq, onstage at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in downtown San Francisco today, telling the crowd the machine’s scanning speed could decipher an entire human genome in less than an hour.

Let that sink in. In less than 15 years we went from what once took billions of dollars and over a decade of research to an hour’s worth of time with the promise of a blip of the cost.

The case serves as a “wake up call” that antibiotic resistance is a growing problem, experts say.

Read more

Scientists have created the first synthetic version of a cardiac stem cell, offering therapeutic benefits comparable to those from natural stem cells — but without the risks and limitations, according to researchers from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University in China.

The newly created synthetic stem cells cannot replicate. That means they could reduce some of the risks associated with natural stem-cell therapies — including tumor growth and immune rejection. The synthetic stem calls would also avoid the fragility of natural stem cells, which require careful storage and a multi-step process of typing and characterization before they can be used.

Read more

Read more

Her death is a reminder that antibiotic-resistant bacteria are getting worse, even as they garner little attention.

Read more

The last of the fun videos about the immune system and how it works.

---

THE FINAL SHOWDOWN! This is the last episode on the immune system and also the very last episode of Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology. In it, Hank explains how the cellular immune response uses helper, cytotoxic, and regulatory T cells to attack body cells compromised by pathogens. He also explores how cytokines activate B and T cells, and what happens if your immune system goes rogue and starts causing autoimmune trouble.

Crash Course A&P Posters: http://store.dftba.com/products/crashcourse-anatomy-and-physiology-poster

Table of Contents
Helper, Cytotoxic and Regulatory T Cells Attack Compromised Body Cells 4:08.
Cytokines Activate B and T Cells 5:00
When Your Immune System Goes Rogue 6:15
Autoimmune Trouble 7:27

***

Crash Course is on Patreon! You can support us directly by signing up at http://www.patreon.com/crashcourse

Read more

Looks like hacking might be alot older then we thought lmao.

---

Biologists at UC San Diego have documented for the first time how very large viruses reprogram the cellular machinery of bacteria during infection to more closely resemble an animal or human cell—a process that allows these alien invaders to trick cells into producing hundreds of new viruses, which eventually explode from and kill the cells they infect.

In a paper published in the January 13 issue of Science, the researchers conducted a series of experiments that allowed them to view in detail what happens inside bacterial cells as the invading viruses replicate.

“Scientists have been studying viruses for a hundred years, but we’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Joe Pogliano, a professor of molecular biology who headed the research team. “Every experiment produced something new and exciting about this system.”