“Intriguing Findings Are for Romance Novels”

         October 29, 2013

A report from the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics Earlier this month, while much of the genetics community was scrambling to edit and print their posters for ASHG, I had the opportunity to attend WCPG, the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics, in Boston.  This was my second trip to WCPG and it is becoming one of my favorite events to… Read more »

ASHG is here once again!

         October 18, 2013

Hey everyone! It’s time once again for the illustrious ASHG – this year in Boston, MA. We are very excited to get to see all of our colleagues and friends and hear about what you’ve been up to. This year we will have six in-booth (#618) demonstrations by Gabe Rudy, VP of Product Development, showcasing SVS 8.0: Identifying Candidate Functional… Read more »

SVS Workflow Automation Webcast: Your Questions Answered

         September 20, 2013

Last week, we presented a webcast on Workflow Automation in SVS. If you were unable to attend, a recording of it is on our website: http://www.goldenhelix.com/Events/recordings/making-ngs-data-analysis-clinically-practical/index.html In this post I’ll respond to some of the questions we were unable to answer within the allotted time. Will you provide a link for the software used in the webcast? I used Golden… Read more »

Upcoming Webcast – Making NGS Data Analysis Clinically Practical: Repeatable and Time-Effective Workflows

         August 28, 2013

Presenter: Autumn Laughbaum, Biostatistician with introduction by Dr. Andreas Scherer, President & CEO Date: September 10, 2013 Duration: 60 Minutes Abstract Exploring next-generation sequence data requires an iterative process whereby a researcher can find a “needle in the haystack” that contributes to a particular disease or other phenotype. Once that needle has been found, a workflow can be established for… Read more »

Guest Post: Finding Rare Pieces of Hay in a Haystack

         August 19, 2013

Utilizing Identical Twins Discordant for Schizophrenia to Uncover de novo Mutations We are living in exciting times – the reality of high-resolution Cand individual genome sequencing now offers renewed hope in the search for the causes of complex diseases. When this technology is combined with genetic relationships, individual sequences add unrivaled proficiency. Our lab is located in London, Ontario, Canada… Read more »

Comparing BEAGLE, IMPUTE2, and Minimac Imputation Methods for Accuracy, Computation Time, and Memory Usage

         July 17, 2013

Genotype imputation is a common and useful practice that allows GWAS researchers to analyze untyped SNPs without the cost of genotyping millions of additional SNPs. In the Services Department at Golden Helix, we often perform imputation on client data, and we have our own software preferences for a variety of reasons. However, other imputation software packages have their own advantages… Read more »

Upcoming Webcast – Exploring DNA/RNA-Seq Analysis Results with Golden Helix GenomeBrowse and SVS

         July 12, 2013

Presenter: Dr. Bryce Christensen, Statistical Geneticist Date: July 24, 2013 Duration: 60 Minutes Abstract Golden Helix GenomeBrowse™, a free visualization tool for all types of sequence data, was introduced in 2012 to broad acclaim. Researchers using GenomeBrowse discovered a product far beyond the status quo with seamless navigation of sequence alignments and other genomic data using a fluid, fast, and… Read more »

Vanessa Hayes, PhD and Desiree Petersen, PhD Use Population Genetics to Dig into Mankind’s Roots

         June 26, 2013

Humans are said to have a 0.1% rate of diversity, seemingly small, but actually quite significant when considering the future of personalized medicine. Gaining a deeper understanding of this genetic variance can help determine susceptibility to disease as well as medicinal response and outcomes. One-third of human genetic diversity can be found in a likely contender for the birthplace of… Read more »

Why You Should Go To TCGC

         June 12, 2013

In a couple of short weeks, Gabe is headed off to TCGC in San Francisco where he will be giving part of a short course. He was super excited about it last year and is even more so this year. I sat down with him yesterday to find out why. Jessica: What’s TCGC? Gabe: Last year I got to attend… Read more »

More Mixed Model Methods!

         June 6, 2013

Thanks to everyone for the great webcast yesterday. We had over 850 people register for the event and actually broke the record! Take that Bryce and Gabe! If you would like to see the recording, view it at: Mixed Models: How to Effectively Account for Inbreeding and Population Structure in GWAS. While preparing for this webcast, we chose to focus… Read more »

All Excited About Mixed Models

         May 29, 2013

Last month, Bryce Christensen wrote a little about mixed models and their application in GWAS. He promised that this analysis would be available in SNP & Variation Suite (SVS) “soon,” but didn’t elaborate. We are now excited to announce that three mixed model methods are available in SVS: GBLUP, EMMAX, and MLMM! To help demonstrate their utility and when to… Read more »

Upcoming webcast – Mixed Models: How to Effectively Account for Inbreeding and Population Structure in GWAS

         May 22, 2013

Presenter: Greta Linse Peterson, Senior Statistician Date: Wednesday, June 5th, 2013 Time: 12:00 pm EDT, 60 minutes Abstract Population structure and inbreeding can confound results from a standard genome-wide association test. Accounting for the random effect of relatedness can lead to lower false discovery rates and identify the causative markers without over-correcting and dampening the true signal. This presentation will… Read more »

Robert Kleta, MD, PhD and His Newly-Formed Team Publish in The New England Journal of Medicine in a Few Short Months with SVS

         May 16, 2013

Thirteen years ago, Dr. Robert Kleta had never heard of a genome-wide association study (GWAS), let alone considered doing one. Now, Dr. Kleta and his colleagues at the University College of London regularly publish articles in The New England Journal of Medicine and other journals on the genetics of rare diseases and their associated phenotypes. States Kleta, “For rare diseases,… Read more »

The Next Phase in Our Evolution

         May 8, 2013

Time goes by fast. With the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, scientists worldwide were trying to understand the cause and effect of variations in the genome as they relate to functionalities, traits and disease. Along the way, we at Golden Helix helped researchers analyze data, discover variations and draw conclusions. It turns out that the real bottleneck… Read more »

The Murky Waters of Variant Nomenclature – You Could Be Missing Vital Information

         May 6, 2013

When researchers realized they needed a way to report genetic variants in scientific literature using a consistent format, the Human Genome Variation Society (HGVS) mutation nomenclature was developed and quickly became the standard method for describing sequence variations. Increasingly, HGVS nomenclature is being used to describe variants in genetic variant databases as well. There are some practical issues that researchers… Read more »

Upcoming Webcast – Knowing Your Downstream: Functional Predictions

         May 1, 2013

Presenter: Dr. Bryce Christensen, Statistical Geneticist and Director of Services Date: Wednesday, May 15th, 2013 Time: 12:00 pm EDT Abstract Next-Generation Sequencing analysis workflows typically lead to a list of candidate variants that may or may not be associated with the phenotype of interest. Any given analysis may result in tens, hundreds, or even thousands of genetic variants which must… Read more »

Mendelspod Podcast with Dr. Lambert: Looking at the Big Picture of Bioinformatics

         April 17, 2013

Recently, Dr. Christophe Lambert joined the esteemed Theral Timpson over at Mendelspod to talk a bit about the big picture of bioinformatics. This 37 minute podcast references a recent blog post by Christophe on Illumina competing with its customers, the notion that if the end user isn’t buying that no one is selling, and learning from our GWAS mistakes. One… Read more »

The State of NGS Variant Calling: DON’T PANIC!!

         March 25, 2013

I’m a believer in the signal. Whole genomes and exomes have lots of signal. Man, is it cool to look at a pile-up and see a mutation as clear as day that you arrived at after filtering through hundreds of thousands or even millions of candidates. When these signals sit right in the genomic “sweet spot” of mappable regions with… Read more »