Genetics

The Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first drug to be biologically produced from genetically modified livestock. The drug antithrombin, a protein which helps prevent blood clotting, will be produced by goats that have been genetically modified with the human version of the gene.

Cleverly, researchers spliced the gene in a specific part of the goat genome so that the goats would only produce the protein in their milk. It's relatively straightforward to isolate the protein drug from other milk proteins and package it for market.

The New York Times recently featured a comprehensive and well-written article by noted Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker on the rise of consumer genomics. Pinker is a participant in the Personal Genome Project, an ambitious initiative to sequence the DNA of 100,000 volunteers for the purpose of better understanding how genes, health, and behavior are interrelated.

Last week the Catholic Church's solidified its official position against the use of assisted reproductive technologies with the release of a new position paper, Dignitas Personae -– Latin for "the dignity of a person." It had been more than two decades since the Vatican had weighed in on issues like in vitro fertilization, embryo freezing, and embryo genetic testing. These technologies have grown significantly in use over the last 20 years.

Pharmaceutical giants Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Eli Lilly have asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to require that patients take a genetic test before receiving their anti-cancer drugs.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that CNN's seven-person science and technology reporting group, led by anchor Miles O'Brien, has been shut down. The move is reportedly editorial, not economic. A CNN spokesperson says that science and technology reporting will be now be moved into Anderson Cooper 360's "Planet in Peril" series.

Using hair from a 20,000 year-old mammoth, Penn State researchers have successfully deciphered more than half of the extinct mammal's DNA. The feat was made possible by new "high throughput" DNA sequencing technology, which is able to generate massive amounts of DNA sequence in very short order.

In an effort to better understand the genetics of cancer, researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have completely sequenced the genome of a woman fatally afflicted with leukemia, a cancer of the blood. This was an important step because the exact genetic errors that lead to many cancers are not known.