ISB News

Genome fingerprinting

Genome Comparison Easier with ‘Fingerprint’ Method

ISB researchers have developed a method of capturing a personal genome as a “fingerprint,” which will have a major impact on how quickly and efficiently genome sequences are compared.

INTEGRATED VARIANTS FROM 13,000 COMPLETE GENOMES AVAILABLE TO PUBLIC IN KAVIAR DATABASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE SEATTLE, WA and FALLS CHURCH, VA, Sept. 23, 2015—The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) and the Inova Translational Medicine Institute (ITMI) announced today a new release of Kaviar, the most comprehensive collection of human genomic variants currently available to the public. This release expands on the January 2015 release most notably by the addition of 3842 whole genome sequences provided by ITMI. Inova, a not-for-profit healthcare system…

ScienceNews Features ISB’s Bipolar Disorder Research in the News

ScienceNews posted a news brief about ISB’s latest research publication that discuss results from the first major whole-genome study of bipolar disorder. Researchers describe a breakthrough in understanding the genetic “architecture” of bipolar disorder and in identifying some of the risk genes. Read more about the research here.

A breakthrough in understanding the genetic ‘architecture’ of bipolar disorder

3 Bullets: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a common, severe and recurrent psychiatric disorder with no known cure and substantial morbidity and mortality. Heritable causes contribute up to 80 percent of lifetime risk for BD. Scientists hope that identifying the specific genes involved in risk for bipolar disorder will lead to new ways to treat the disease. ISB researchers identified contributions of rare variants to BD by sequencing the genomes of…

What’s the Secret to ‘Extreme Longevity’?

3 Bullets: ISB researchers and their collaborators studied a group of supercentenarians (110 years or older) to explore the genetics of ‘extreme longevity.’ The group performed whole-genome sequencing on 17 supercentenarians in order to look for any rare protein-altering variants associated with extreme longevity. While the researchers did not find a single cause for extreme longevity within this sample size, the genomic data is now available for future studies. By…