Discovery That Modern Humans Aren’t Especially Unique, Genetically Speaking, May Lead to Improved Precision Medicine Diagnostics and Therapeutics

Of interest to clinical pathologists is the finding that sequencing the genomes of Humans and Neanderthals revealed a link between severity of COVID-19 infections and Neanderthal DNA Genetic scientists from the University of California Santa Cruz have learned that just 7%—or less—of our DNA is unique to the human species, with the remainder of our genomes coming from other archaic species, such as Neanderthal and Denisovan. Why should this matter to pathologists and clinical laboratories?...

Common DNA Testing Method Using SNP Chips Struggles to Find Rare Variants Associated with BRCA Test, UK Researchers Find

Results of the UK study confirm for clinical laboratory professionals the importance of fully understanding the design and function of SNP chips they may be using in their labs Here is another example of a long-established clinical laboratory test that—upon new evidence—turns out to be not as accurate as once thought. According to research conducted at the University of Exeter in Devon, UK, Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) chips (aka, SNP microarrays)—technology commonly used in commercial...

Use of “Long Read” Gene Sequencing Allows University of Washington Researchers to Uncover Thousands of Never-before Seen Gene Variations

This and similar research initiatives expected to increase the number of genetic markers that would be useful for creating clinical pathology laboratory tests and therapeutic drugs Whole human genome sequencing continues to become faster, easier, cheaper, and more accurate to do. Because of these advances, the sheer number of human genomes being sequenced is skyrocketing. This huge increase in data is helping researchers unlock many new insights that, in turn, are fueling efforts to develop...

Pathologists May Be Healthcare’s Rock Stars of Big Data in Genomic Medicine’s ’Third Wave’

Pathologists are positioned to be the primary interpreters of big data as genomic medicine further evolves Pathologists and clinical laboratory managers may be surprised to learn that at least one data scientist has proclaimed pathologists the real big data rock stars of healthcare. The reason has to do with the shift in focus of genomic medicine from therapeutics and presymptomatic disease assessment to big data analytics. In a recent posting published at Forbes.com, data scientist Jim Golden...
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