Category: Biotech/Pharma News

By Kevin E. Noonan — The BRCA2 gene is one member of a pair of genes that changed the patent landscape several years ago, when the Supreme Court ruled that "mere" isolation was insufficient to render genomic embodiments thereof patent eligible, in Association of Molecular Pathologists v. Myriad Genetics.  As understood at the time patents…

By Kevin E. Noonan — One of the wonders and satisfactions of modern science has been the elucidation (usually based in genetics) of the wonders of nature that have been famously observed but not explained until the proper tools (again, usually genetic) have been developed.  One of these is the ability of certain animals to…

A new non-profit advocacy organization, New Cures for Cancers, recently announced its launch and the opening of its website.  The mission of the organization is to give cancer patients and their families and friends a podium to tell their stories and to demand judicial and legislative advocacy to motivate new diagnostics, personalized medicines, and drugs…

By Kevin E. Noonan — The avocado, having gained popularity (at least in the U.S.) as a convenient (and delicious) vehicle for consuming otherwise not particularly healthful corn chips, has more recently been hailed as a "superfood" when consumed in diets as a healthy form of fat.  Recently, the avocado joined the ranks of other…

By Kevin E. Noonan — The coming of the genomic age has made popular genetic explanations of traits (behavioral as well as structural) in plants, animals, and humans (see, e.g., "Genomic Sequence of Strawberry Determined"; "Silver Birch Genetics Explained"; "Genome Structure of the American Cockroach"; "Finding Nemo's Genome"; "Dolphin Genes Show Relationships between Large Brains…

By Kevin E. Noonan — Durum wheat, Triticum turgidum L. ssp. durum (Desf.) Husn., used principally for pasta production, was derived from wild emmer wheat, T. turgidum ssp. dicoccoides (Körn. ex Asch. & Graebn.) Thell. from domesticated emmer wheat, T. turgidum ssp. dicoccum (Schrank ex Schübl.) Thell. about 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent.  Domesticated wheat became established as a human…

By Kevin E. Noonan — The portion of the eukaryotic world inhabited by plants exhibits a genetic complexity not shared by members of the animal world (see, for example, "Rose Genome Reveals Its Exquisite Complexities").  The strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) genome, recently explicated in a paper published last month in Nature Genetics, provides yet another example of…

By Kevin E. Noonan — A rose may be a rose may be a rose (to paraphrase Gertrude Stein) but genetically roses (like many plant species) are wickedly complex.  The genus Rosa comprises about 200 species, although only 8-20 species are thought to have contributed to modern rose cultivars.  Rose genomic complexity is expressed, inter…

By Kevin E. Noonan — The plague, that variety of human ailments caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria, is mythic in human history, a nightmare disease carried by fleas infesting rats, a species that is omnipresent in human civilizations.  Its spread in earlier times was a nascent harbinger of the much more global spread of…

By Kevin E. Noonan — Human evolution, once its occurrence was recognized over a century and a half ago, has long been a source of confusion, concern, and controversy (as well as fascination and wonder).  The recent explosion in our understanding of the human genome, and particularly genomes of humanity's ancestors, has refined the concept…