It is an honor to be published in The Journal of Precision Medicine’s June/July 2020 issue in an article co-authored by Dr. Christiane Scherer and myself, “Diagnosing and Tracking COVID-19 Infections Leveraging Next-Gen Sequencing.” In this article, I detail: The key facts about COVID-19, reviewing the epidemiology, reservoir hosts, transmission routes, and clinical manifestation. Answering the question of how Next-Generation Sequencing can… Read more »
Golden Helix has been incredibly fortunate to have been featured in a variety of publications over these last six months. Topics span from the history and future of our company to several new use cases for our solutions that extend into the infectious disease space, recently coming to fruition with the COVID-19 pandemic. We are so grateful to have received… Read more »
As I prepared to write the Customer Publication blog this month, I was excited by the number of recently published papers that stood as examples of how both VarSeq and SVS software are employed to advance diagnostics and treatments in human medicine. We often think of SVS as the go-to platform for Agrigenomics, however both of our platforms have broad… Read more »
It’s everyone’s favorite time of the year; Golden Helix’s Annual T-Shirt Design Competition is starting! If you’d like to participate, simply send a sketch of your design to marketing@goldenhelix.com. Don’t forget about the sweet prizes we’re handing out for the top three designs: First Place: $300 Second Place: $200 Third Place: $100 Deadline: August 25, 2020 How It Works Draw it… Read more »
It is an honor to be featured in the Clinical OMICs May/June 2020 issue in a Q&A with the Editor discussing the past, present, and future of Golden Helix. In this article, I detail: Our most significant success throughout the past five years How our products differentiate Golden Helix in the market Our most significant opportunities in the next five years. If… Read more »
The University of Washington’s Combined Annotation Dependent Depletion (CADD) algorithm measures the deleteriousness of genetic variants. This includes single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNVs) and short insertions and deletions (indels) throughout the human reference genome assembly. This algorithm was introduced in 2014 and has since become one of the most widely used tools to assess human genetic variation. Since 2014, the algorithm has been… Read more »
We have had many customers come to us over the years with a simple problem: they have BAM files for whole exome or gene panel data and would like to call CNVs using VarSeq’s powerful CNV calling capabilities, but they don’t have a bed file defining the target regions for their samples. To address this problem, we have developed a… Read more »
Abstract Before assessing the clinical significance of a somatic mutation, one must determine if the mutation is likely to be a driver mutation (i.e. a mutation that provides a selective growth advantage, thereby promoting cancer development). To aid clinicians in this process, VSClinical provides an oncogenicity scoring system, which uses a variety of metrics to classify a given somatic mutation… Read more »
An under-appreciated area of complexity when looking into the field of genetics from the outside can be found in genes and transcripts. Alternative splicing allows eukaryotic species to have a wonderfully powerful genetic code, resulting in multiple protein isoforms being encoded in a single section of DNA. But when it comes to variant interpretation, different transcripts can result in widely different predicted… Read more »
Like many of you, I was supposed to attend the 2020 ACMG Meeting in San Antonio this March with a few colleagues. In addition to attending the conference, my first blog post for Golden Helix was going to be about our time at the conference. Thanks to the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic, none of us got to attend the conference. (We… Read more »
Dear All, Going back in time to the beginning of this year, it would have been difficult to imagine what our world would look like as of June 2020. Things changed quickly. While we are still in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the senseless killing of George Floyd triggered social unrest here in the USA that points to deeper… Read more »
Writing this blog post to summarize and highlight our customer’s publications is undoubtedly one of my favorite things to do! The wide variety of topics is always surprising and inspiring, and I am humbled by the efforts of dedicated scientists who are helping to protect and enrich our lives in so many ways. Our SNP & Variation Suite (SVS) software… Read more »
Today, Healthcare Tech Outlook announced its collection of the Top 10 Genetic Diagnostics Companies of 2020. We are incredibly honored to have received this award and being recognized amongst the top biotech companies! If you are interested in reading our story, and why we were selected for this award, you can access the publication here: https://genetic.healthcaretechoutlook.com/vendor/golden-helix-bioinformatics-for-advanced-life-science-research-cid-1369-mid-128.html. As always, we would not be… Read more »
In VarSeq 2.2.1, you can set template annotation sources to automatically update to the latest version. Previously, VarSeq templates were frozen in time. Now, each new project created from a template would use the same source that was used when the template was created. When you save a template, you can have the sources automatically update to the latest version…. Read more »
SVS offers several options to conduct genome wide association tests and mixed linear models. At times, it can be challenging to decide which test, model, or adjustments to use when setting up your analysis. I want to briefly explore the options available in SVS for association tests, and mixed linear models to hopefully facilitate in understanding and choosing which options… Read more »
This morning I released a new version of my eBook “Clinical Variant Analysis for Cancer – Second Edition.” The clinical utilization of Next-Generation Sequencing data to diagnose cancer has taken off, resulting in the need to standardize the interpretation and reporting of observed genomic variations. This eBook explores the entire clinical diagnostic process. It demonstrates how Golden Helix software can support clinicians with their… Read more »
Thank you to everyone who joined me for our latest webcast, “Next-Gen Sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus with Golden Helix.” If you missed the live event and are interested in knowing what we talked about, you may access the recorded event below: Our Live Q&A generated a lot of great questions. Unfortunately, we were unable to answer them all, but… Read more »
Golden Helix has been committed to making sure our community has the tools and resources they need during this pandemic. We have developed several different assistance programs, such as our home office licenses for current users and our software discounts for COVID-19 related projects, to name a few. We have been approached by a number of labs not working with COVID-19… Read more »
It is an honor to be featured by Clinical Lab Manager where I discuss how Next-Gen Sequencing can be leveraged in the fight against COVID-19. You can access this article directly by visiting https://www.clinicallabmanager.com/thought-leadership/leveraging-next-generation-sequencing-technology-in-the-fight-against-covid-19-22584. If this is an area of interest for your organization, please reach out to our team and we would be happy to discuss this in more detail.
Scientific investigations and genetic discoveries continue to happen in several diverse areas even while our world is currently consumed by the greatest health challenge of our era. Below are a few examples of some of the great work being done in the fields of human medicine, ecology, and breed conservation of animal species. As always, we are so very proud… Read more »
