Connection Between Epigenome, Selective Mutability, Evolution, and Human Disease
Li, Harris et al., PLoS Genetics
Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine and elsewhere propose a "connection between the epigenome, selective mutability, evolution, and human disease" based on the findings of their study on associations of structural mutability with germline DNA methylation and with non-allelic homologous recombination mediated by low-copy repeats. "Combined evidence from four human sperm methylome maps, human genome evolution, structural polymorphisms in the human population, and previous genomic and disease studies consistently points to a strong association of germline hypomethylation and genomic instability," the Baylor-led team writes.
Google's GDrive Release Imminent
Thanks to a quick-thinking social media consultant with a camera phone, the cat was officially out of the bag last September regarding Google's mythical "GDrive" (Google Drive) now allegedly just called "Drive."
Johannes Wigand took a picture of what was assumed to be Drive (codenamed "Platypus") at a Google-sponsored event and posted it on his blog. It turned out that the picture was indeed of Drive and Google employees have been using the virtual disk drive storage service internally for a few years now. Actually, people have been murmuring about Drive's existence since 2006, so it appears that Google really wanted to make sure they got the kinks out before competing with the likes of Dropbox in this space.
The rumor is that Google is getting ready to roll out Drive after a prolonged period in beta mode behind Google's wall — apparently Drive was very buggy until recently. Right now, folks are speculating that this new storage solution will be offered in the same way that Gmail account holders are offered a certain ever-increasing amount of storage space for their email and docs, but with the option to buy more as needed.