The Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel
Mackay, Richards et al., Nature
North Carolina State University's Trudy Mackay and her colleagues present the Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel, "a community resource for analysis of population genomics and quantitative traits."
Sequencers and Tanks
March 19, 2010
From his updated map of sequencers, Nick Loman says that Illumina machines are still dominant — making up 60 percent of his sample — but that the race for second place is close. Roche, he says, has just nudged out SOLiD by eight machines. (His Google map can be seen here.) To get a better estimate of what sequencers are out there, Loman is kicking off "the great high-throughput sequencing serial number challenge," taking inspiration from a statistical approach used by the British during World War II to estimate the number of German tanks through serial numbers. If those serial numbers are continuous, then a better guess at the number of tanks, or sequencers, can be made. At Genetic Future, Daniel MacArthur calls it a "fiendish plan." He adds: "There are certainly a number of ways in which such estimates can prove inaccurate — but as Loman says, it's still worth doing the experiment."