The cost of sequencing has dropped precipitously over the last five years, the cost of library prep has not moved by anywhere near as much. For some experiments this is a major headache, particularly in small genomes, metagenomics, and for us, RNA-seq. Reducing the cost […]
One of our statisticians recently co-authored a paper in Nature Methods on the use and misues of p-values: The fickle P value generates irreproducible results. After reading this paper I really felt that I’d learned something useful; that p-values, which we use to determine if […]
This is sort of a book review: Statistics for Biologists is a collection of articles from the Nature journals including the Nat Meth Points of Significance column. This collection brings together the POS articles published since 2013, which aim to provide biologists with a basic […]
We’re currently testing some new methods in the lab to find an optimal exome library prep, not the capture just the prep. The ideal would be a PCR-free exome, however we want to work with limited material and so maximising library prep efficiency is key, […]
Two woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) have had their genomes sequenced by a team led by the Swedish Museum of Natural History: Complete Genomes Reveal Signatures of Demographic and Genetic Declines in the Woolly Mammoth. The BBC story included coverage of the Long Now Foundation and […]
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh is one of the best books I’ve ever read, the last time a book made me cry I was a kid. I was in tears several times, including on a flight from […]
Illumina launched NeoPrep at AGBT and Keith Robison at OmicsOmics wrote a detailed summary of what Illumina say the NeoPrep is capable of (he compared this movie of the electro-wetting technology to video games of his, and my, youth), I thought I’d write down my […]
Nature Methods recently carried a News & Views article from Nick Loman and Mick Watson: “Successful test launch for nanopore sequencingâ€, in which they discuss the early reports of MinION usage; including a paper in the same issue of Nature Methods (Jain et al). They […]
Looks like I missed out on a bargain, the BGI has sold all their HiSeq 2500 instruments on eBay, but the auction ended yesterday.PS: Is the 454 on eBay for £7000 an April fool?
I’ve written before about how much I liked Nature Methods “Points of View†by Bang Wong and I created a public Mendeley group so you could access the papers. I’d also said that having the articles collected together as a hard-copy version would be great.Now […]
