Golden Helix Blog

See you in Vancouver for ASHG 2016!

Oct 13, 2016

It’s hard to believe that summer has already faded into fall and that ASHG 2016 is right around the corner! 2016 has been quite a busy year for us so far at Golden Helix. We have been working hard to bring our community the very best tools available for variant…

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Why Call CNVs: Getting More from your NGS Data

Oct 11, 2016

Copy Number Variants have been important to clinical genetics for quite a while now. So, what has made now the right time to be looking at calling CNVs from NGS data? Well, there are a number of good reasons. The dominant one is simply that the NGS data you are…

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Upcoming Webcast on CNV Calling of Target Regions

Sep 27, 2016

Copy Number Variations (CNVs) play an important role in human health and disease, and the detection of CNVs in clinical samples has the potential to improve clinical diagnoses and inform treatment decisions. Yet until now, if you wanted to have CNVs on your targeted gene samples, you would need an…

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Big Data Webcast Q&A

Sep 22, 2016

Gabe Rudy’s webcast yesterday, Big Data at Golden Helix: Scaling to Meet the Demand of Clinical and Research Genomics, was a huge success with well over 300 registered. In today’s blog post, I wanted to recap the Q&A session with Gabe. If you missed the webcast, check it out! Question:  What is…

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NGS-Based Clinical Testing: Part V

Sep 20, 2016

Any validated bioinformatics pipeline must be continuously monitored. Quality management in clinical testing labs ensures that any divergence from predefined quality metrics during the analysis of clinical samples is investigated. For example: There is an insufficient number of sequence reads that passed the predefined base quality score threshold The number…

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Let There Be Genomes: Big Data Genomics Webcast Teaser

Sep 15, 2016

Big data is here, but fear not, you don’t need a Hadoop cluster to analyze your genomes or your cohorts of tens of thousands of samples! It turns out, for the kind of algorithms employed in variant annotation and filtering, running optimized local programs is often faster anyway. As we…

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Determining the best LD Pruning options

Sep 13, 2016

Pruning your data based on Linkage Disequilibrium (LD) values is an important quality assurance step for GWAS analysis. In particular, some tests such as Identity by Descent Estimation (IBD), Inbreeding Coefficient Estimation (f) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) will obtain better results if the markers used are not in linkage…

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Webcast on Big Data in Genomics

Sep 8, 2016

Wednesday, September 21st @ 12:00 pm EDT Every day, the trove of genomic data is growing. Clinics are sequencing targeted genes at high read depths to report out genetic tests. Research groups are adding new exomes and genomes to their disease-specific cohorts. Agricultural breeders are genotyping their herds and flocks…

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NGS-Based Clinical Testing: Part IV

Sep 6, 2016

After the Wet Lab process has been completed, the bioinformatics analysis of the sequencing data work begins. The next three blogs will focus on three aspects of this process. The building blocks of a bioinformatics pipeline, documentation and validation (today’s topic) Quality Management Clinical Reporting The Building Blocks of an NGS…

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NGS-Based Clinical Testing: Part III

Sep 1, 2016

Getting the NGS wet bench process right is not a small undertaking. Targeted NGS assays such as multigene panels or exome sequencing allow for the targeted analysis of genomic regions that are of particular interest. For every sample type, e.g. blood, formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded specimens, saliva etc, there must be a detailed…

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NGS-Based Clinical Testing: Part II

Aug 25, 2016

We have come a long way since Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) evolved as a set of technologies in the 1970s. The higher throughput and rapid reduction of costs associated with NGS have lead to the accelerated adoption of clinical testing that we are experiencing today. Currently, it is applied to analyze…

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Personalized Medicine through Tumor Sequencing

Aug 23, 2016

Join us for a guest presentation Personalized Medicine through Tumor Sequencing by Dr. Jeffrey Rosenfeld! Wednesday, September 7th 12:00 pm EDT The identification of medications that target specific gene mutations is one of the major recent advances in cancer therapy. In 2001 Gleevec was approved to treat patients with the BCR-ABL fusion…

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FAQ: Creating Repeatable Clinical Workflows

Aug 18, 2016

Question: Now that I’ve added annotation sources for my sample, filtered down to a list of interesting variants, flagged those variants and generated a clinical report, can I save or copy the annotation sources and filters for use on another sample? Short Answer: Yes! Long Answer: VarSeq was created with…

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NGS-Based Clinical Testing: Part I

Aug 16, 2016

The adoption of genetic services is key to our ability to provide personalized medicine in the future. The goal is to better diagnose diseases, predict their outcome, and choose the best possible care option for a patient. We still have a long way to go to achieve this goal. While…

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Guest Webcast by Dr. Rohan Palmer

Aug 4, 2016

Dr. Rohan Palmer presents: Investigating Shared Additive Genetic Variation for Alcohol Dependence Wednesday, August 10th @ 12pm EDT Abstract: Molecular genetic research has supported the use of a multivariate phenotype representing alcohol dependence in studies of genetic association. One recent study found that additive genetic effects on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual…

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Compute Kinship Matrices & GBLUP on Very Large Sample Sets

Aug 2, 2016

Now available in SVS! Increasingly important in the analysis of the genotype to phenotype relationship is accurately accounting for the relatedness of samples. This is especially important to model correctly in plant and animal populations where man-directed breeding shapes the relationship structure. Along with trait association, one of the high-value…

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Precision Medicine Leverages Innovative Tech Advances

Jul 26, 2016

We are excited to announce that earlier this month an article by our CEO, Dr. Andreas Scherer, was featured in Chronicle Pharmabiz. The article is focused on how Precision Medicine is becoming a reality by leveraging the advances in technology. The excerpt below is courtesy of Chronicle Pharmabiz. Almost 2,500…

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Our 5 Most Watched Webcasts

Jul 21, 2016

Every month hundreds of clinicians and researchers access the variety of free resources on the Golden Helix website. Our resource library hosts eBooks, webcasts and tutorials to keep the community apprised of new methods, informed on best practices and to help our customers get the most out of their software purchase.…

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Custom Filtering using ClinVar Annotations

Jul 19, 2016

ClinVar is one of our most used annotations sources for a variety of workflows. It is also the public annotation source that is updated most frequently of all the sources currently supported in VarSeq. ClinVar provides new versions of their database once a month in several formats (XML, VCF, TXT).…

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Finding Rare Mutations at the Center for Rare Jewish Genetic Disorders

Jul 14, 2016

Since 1999, Bonei Olam has been providing large-scale funding for fertility treatment and research. The non-profit’s mission is to provide whatever means or resources necessary to help childless couples achieve the dream of parenthood. Today, it is recognized in the worldwide medical arena for its leadership role at the forefront…

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