Good to see reasonably positive/researched/balanced reporting on genomics in a mainstream publication: http://www.economist.com/node/16349358?story_id=16349358. I believe that the public getting educated/excited about genomics-driven personalized medicine will accelerate the genomics “arc to clinical” — a good thing, I think, for the life science community and the public at large.
Some excerpts:
… the science of biology is being transformed.
… the genomic revolution depends on two technological changes. One, in computing power, is generic—though computer-makers are slavering at the amount of data that biology 2.0 will need to process, and the amount of kit that will be needed to do the processing. This torrent of data, however, is the result of the second technological change that is driving genomics, in the power of DNA sequencing.
… the goal of the new biology is to tie these things together reliably and to understand how the phenotype emerges from the genotype.
… that will lead to better medical diagnosis and treatment. It will result in the ability to manipulate animals, plants, fungi and bacteria to human ends.
