Blog Comments

Kinetica Online is pleased to provide direct links to commentaries from our senior editor Dr. Steven Pelech has posted on other blogs sites. Most of these comments appear on the GenomeWeb Daily Scan website, which in turn highlight interesting blogs that have been posted at numerous sites in the blogosphere since the beginning of 2010. A wide variety of topical subjects are covered ranging from the latest scientific breakthroughs, research trends, politics and career advice. The original blogs and Dr. Pelech’s comments are summarized here under the title of the original blog. Should viewers wish to add to these discussions, they should add their comments at the original blog sites.

The views expressed by Dr. Pelech do not necessarily reflect those of the other management and staff at Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation. However, we wish to encourage healthy debate that might spur improvements in how biomedical research is supported and conducted.

Genetic Testing

'That Doesn't Sound So Terrible'

Blogger Roxanne Palmer at Slate's Brow Beat blog wrote that the late actress Elizabeth Taylor's most famed physical feature — her eyes, "arresting: large, liquid, and framed by a thick fringe of eyelashes" — may have resulted from a mutation at FOXC2 that resulted in two sets of eyelashes. One potential complication is that damage to the cornea can result if the extra eyelashes grow inward, and FOXC2 mutations are also associated with lymphedema-distichiasis syndrome, a hereditary disease that can cause disorders of the lymphatic system. S. Pelech raises the ethical question that if Elizabeth Taylor's parents had amniocentesis and genome-wide sequencing performed when she was just a tiny fetus and they learned that she had a genetic mutation that could cause immune and vision problems, would they have elected to have the pregnancy terminated? Read More...

Saving Lives

Matthew Herper in Forbes recounted how genome-wide sequencing has helped Sesha Lundell - whose son and nephews died in infancy of a rare disease that had also affected her brothers. Researchers were able to find the gene for the disease in 16 months, and this could potentially offer Ms. Lundell the opportunity to have children via in vitro fertilization, and select the embryos that don't have the gene. S. Pelech suggests that a better title for this blog should really have been "Eliminating Lives!" as undesirable embryos are killed off earlier. However, selection of embryos for implantation based on genetic information does provide for improved prospects to raise babies that have fewer in-born errors that culminate in malformations and disease. Read More...