Have a great Christmas break…hope to see you in 2015. James.

Two major problems are encountered by researchers wanting to analyse circulating tumour DNA; contamination by gDNA from white blood cells; and the relatively low amount of circulating DNA. Because of this the protocols used for blood collection and circulating DNA extraction are critical. This post […]

I’ve been lucky enough to work in an Institute that views its core facilities as a cornerstone of the scientific output, and we get acknowledged for most of the work we do. Other core facilities are not so lucky; and even here sometimes people simply […]

Fred Sanger – Double Nobel Laureate: A Biography.Author: George G. Brownlee.Publisher: Cambridge University Press (2014) ISBN: 9781107083349Fred Sanger’s biography has been written by his one-time PhD student, and long time collaborator, George Brownlee. Fred (I’ll refer to him by his first name as I think […]

Congratulations to Marc Tischkowitz and colleagues for getting into Altmetrics Top 100 papers of the year. Their NEJM paper on increase risk of breast cancer in loss-of-function PALB2 carriers was number 87 and one of two papers from the University of Cambridge.The Altmetric Top 100 […]

Clinical sequencing is looming and recently I’ve heard more, and better, arguments for using whole genomes. These have mainly focused on the quality of PCR-free genomes, which have uniform coverage and few regions of missing or very low coverage. Compared to the PCR and hybridisation-capture […]

New research at the LMB (across the road from the Institute I work in) has demonstrated how alternate “genetic polymers” can be used in place of DNA and RNA: Synthetic Genetic Polymers Capable of Heredity and Evolution. XNAs [xeno-nucleic acids] use nucleotide analgoues, and the […]

Nature ran a great news feature on the top 100 papers of all time. The graphic below appears in the article and the first thing I wondered is where do papers I’ve been an author on sit? I know this is pure vanity but lets […]

Here’s the front cover to this weeks Nature featuring an image by Kelly Krause (@kellybkrause), Nature’s Creative Director. It is a wonderful picture which manages to blend both Man and Mouse with the DNA helix as the mouse’s tail, a lovely detail.The Mouse ENCODE projects […]

I’d like to say that Ian Hislop and Paul Merton visited last week to record a special HIGNFY, but alas no. However my lab did appear briefly on the most recent show, unfortunately the team mixed our institute up with King’s College! Before I set […]