Taking the Pulse, A Health Care and Life Sciences Video Podcast | Episode 164: Emily Chee, US General Manager of Novartis Gene Therapies
Yours, Mine and Ours (not yet!): An Update on the Patentability of Human Genes -
Intentional genomic alterations (IGAs) in animals refer to deliberate changes made to the genetic material of animals. These alterations are designed to introduce, remove or modify specific traits in animals for various...more
The Administrative Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Human Genetic Resources (the “Regulations”), promulgated by China’s State Council, have been in effect for almost three years. As the administrative...more
The National Institutes of Health has issued a request for information (RFI) on its Genomic Data Sharing (GDS) Policy to help ensure it keeps pace with the evolving genomic research landscape. The RFI will help inform...more
The domestic cat has been the subject of much study, recently involving its genetic structure, genomic DNA sequence, and comparisons with other felines. The first such study was published in 2014, when an international...more
The advent of technology making feasible elucidation of whole genomic sequencing over the past 30 years has led to reports of many if not most important or interesting animal genomes (including the most celebrated results of...more
On July 13, 2021, Prime Medicine, a Massachusetts biotech company developing next generation gene editing technology, emerged from stealth mode with $315 million in financing. The financing includes a $115 million Series A...more
The humble peach has been the inspiration for pies, album titles, independent movies, and a fictional woman's baseball team, but is also an important food species, yielding 24.5 million tons globally in 2018. Like all plant...more
The giraffe is the tallest extant terrestrial animal, and its iconic long neck (6 feet) provides advantages for foraging for food and detecting predators on the veldt over long distances. As a consequence, however, the...more
Perception by the five human senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch) varies significantly between individuals and populations. Some use these differences to their advantage, such as sommeliers capable of detecting...more
There are an estimated 219 million cases of malaria per year, leading to more than 400,000 deaths annually according to the World Health Organization. Hemocytes (insect white blood cells) comprise the mosquito immune system...more
Turns Out, Early Humans Not the Cause of Woolly Rhinoceros Extinction - Paleogenomics (the use of genetic analysis of DNA contained in ancient remains) has developed rapidly since Svante Pääbo first showed that DNA could...more
As the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life throughout the world this spring, bats have been a prominent feature in news stories and recriminations about how the pandemic started (and being blamed even more than happenings in...more
The human tendency to identify with tribes of "like" humans (related by family, place of origin, or religion, among other bases) was perverted during the Twentieth Century (and in some places remains so today) into the idea...more
Gregor Mendel's great good fortune (or extraordinary prescience) was that he chose for the traits he used to illustrate the genetic control of inheritance (despite having no inkling of its mechanism) traits in his pea plants...more
As consumers, when we think of privacy, one of the first adjectives that springs to mind should be “inconsistent.” Consumers claim to want their personal information used only for the purposes they originally provided it, and...more
The new Belgian Royal Act of 9 January 2018 on Biobanks will apply on 1 November 2018. The Royal Act implements Article 22 of the Belgian Law of 19 December 2008 on the procurement and use of human body material for human...more
A clash over access to and use of genetic sequence data (GSD) is currently brewing on several international fronts. To date, GSD has been routinely deposited in open-source databases such as GenBank of the National Center for...more
In a case involving medical methods invented by two Nobel laureates, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled that sovereign immunity prevents a third researcher from pursuing his claim of co-inventorship...more
Two years ago today, the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity (“Protocol”) entered into international...more
Invertebrate zoology is in many ways the most comprehensive survey course on biology, encompassing most multicellular life on the planet. (Indeed, the study of the Order Coleoptera alone, comprising the beetles, would...more
The phylogenetic Order Diptera comprises the "true" flies (defined as having a single pair of wings arising from the thorax) and is first found in the fossil record in the Middle Triassic (~245 million years ago). It is one...more