The Human Genome Project was completed 10 years ago yesterday, and in the intervening time, there have been a number of advances in genome sequencing and biology, the National Human Genome Research Institute says. According to its calculations, the cost to generate a human genome sequence has dropped from about $1 billion when the project began in 1990 to between $10 million and $50 million when the project ended to between $3,000 and $5,000 today. Also, in the past 10 years the number of human genomes that have been sequenced has skyrocketed from just one to thousands, and there are now nearly 3,000 genes with known phenotypes or disease-causing mutations.

"On the 10-year anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, it is appropriate to celebrate our accomplishments over the past decide and to reflect on the impact of genomics on research, medicine, and society," Eric Green, the NHGRI director, says in a statement. "By improving our understanding of basic genome biology, the genomic underpinnings of disease and genomic medicine, the field gets ever closer to its ultimate goal — improving human health through genomics research."

The NHGRI numbers also note that the number of drugs with pharmacogenetic information on their labels has jumped from four in 1990 to more than 100 in 2013.

AMDeC said late on Friday that it is shutting down.

The board has decided to close the doors on the Academy for Medical Development and Collaboration, or AMDeC, after 15 years, it said, though it did not say why. The organization was in created in 1997 to "facilitate and encourage collaboration among the major research institutions in the [New York] region.

"We are proud to say that we have achieved this — and much more," it said in a statement.

AMDeC President and CEO Maria Mitchell told Daily Scan sister publication GenomeWeb Daily News less than seven months ago that it was expanding its mission and developing new initiatives to help its members save on costs to better ride through the economic downturn.

A link between eating red meat and heart disease has been known for a while, but just how eating a steak leads to atherosclerosis isn't quite clear, writes The Economist. Stanley Hazen from the Cleveland Clinic, though, says the effect might be mediated through the gut microbiome.

As they report in Nature Medicine, Hazen and his team found that intestinal microbes metabolize L-carnitine, a trimethylamine found in red meat, to trimethylamine-N-oxide, which, in mice, leads to atherosclerosis. Trimethylamine-N-oxide levels, they added, were higher in human omnivores than in human vegetarians or vegans.

The necessary microbes, The Economist notes, are not always present — vegetarians and vegans are less likely to be able to produce trimethylamine-N-oxide, even after taking carnitine supplements or when persuaded "in the interests of science" to eat a steak. And when antibiotics are used to kill off gut bacteria, even steak eaters produce less trimethylamine-N-oxide.

In a cohort of nearly 2,600 people, plasma levels of it and its L-carnitine precursor were associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease and cardiac events like heart attack or stroke. And in mouse studies, the researchers found that prolonged exposure to L-carnitine led mice to develop atherosclerosis.

While "the precise chain of events linking microbes to heart disease is still unclear," The Economist adds that "this study suggests that people looking for the link between heart disease and the eating of meat have been ignoring two culprits, carnitine and bacteria."

The US Supreme Court is gearing up to hear arguments in the Myriad Genetics gene patenting case on Monday. The Myriad patents cover the isolated BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which increase the risk of breast, ovarian, and other cancers, while critics say isolated DNA is a product of nature and, therefore, is not patentable. The implications of a decision in The Association for Molecular Pathology v. the US Patent and Trademark Office and Myriad Genetics case, Heidi Ledford at Nature writes, may not be as broad as some think.

"Symbolically, this case is a pretty big deal," Duke University's Robert Cook-Deegan tells Nature's Ledford. "But the practical consequences of it are limited."

University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey's Jeffrey Rosenfeld and Christopher Mason from Cornell University recently wrote in Genomic Medicine that, according to their analysis, about 41 percent of the human genome could be covered by patent claims. Ledford at Nature notes that other researchers like Christopher Holman, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Harvard Law School's Nicholson Price place that percentage closer to a quarter.

The case, Ledford adds, focuses on isolated gene patents, and there are other types of patents that also cover genes. And Harvard's Price says that whole genome sequencing likely would not infringe any gene patents as it looks at the full scope of the genome rather than at isolated DNA. Cook-Deegan adds, though, that if the court does take a broad view of the case, whole-genome approaches could be affected.

A decision in the case is expected toward the end of June, Nature adds.

US President Barack Obama unveiled his budget proposal for fiscal year 2014 yesterday, in which he outlined his plan to raise $600 billion in new revenue, according to the New York Times. In remarks, Obama said that this budget replaces the across-the-board sequester cuts "with smarter ones, making long-term reforms, eliminating actual waste and programs we don't need anymore," according to a White House transcript.

For the National Institutes of Health, this proposed 2014 budget would give a slight, 1.5 percent increase as compared to 2012 to its coffers, bringing its total funding to $31.3 billion, ScienceInsider reports. "Everything's relative," says Francis Collins, the NIH director, according to ScienceInsider. "Considering what we've been going through in FY '13, what's being proposed here is really gratifying." NIH is funded at $30.8 billion for 2013 under a continuing resolution.

As Daily Scan sister publication GenomeWeb Daily News reports, the National Human Genome Research Institute would receive a 1 percent budget increase under the Obama plan. GWDN notes that NHGRI aims to continue following its strategic plan to focus less on fundamental genomics and more on translating those findings into the clinic.

The National Science Foundation, meanwhile, would see an 8.4 percent increase from 2012 levels, giving it a total budget of $7.6 billion, the Chronicle of Higher Education says, adding that the Department of Energy Office of Science would also see a boost, bringing its budget to $5 billion, a 5.7 percent increase over 2012 levels.

The reaction to the budget has been mixed, a separate ScienceInsider post shows. Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas) gives the budget proposal "a failing grade," and says the House science committee, which he chairs, will hold hearings on Obama's budget priorities.

Meanwhile, Hunter Rawlings, the president of the Association of American Universities, says that his group "strongly [supports] the President's proposals to eliminate the ill-considered across-the-board sequester and to increase funding for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy Office of Science, Department of Defense basic research, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and some key student financial aid programs." He adds, though, that the budget isn't perfect and that his group does "not agree with everything in this budget. But it is a strong start."

The family of Francis Crick, a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, put a few of his things, including a letter to his son about the structure of DNA as well as his Nobel Prize itself, up for auction. And they have fetched millions of dollars, Reuters reports.

Indeed Crick's letter to his son sold for $6 million at Christie's , making it the most expensive letter ever sold — beating the prior record of $3.4 million for a letter sent by US President Abraham Lincoln to schoolchildren. Christie's had estimated Crick's letter would sell for between $1 million and $2 million.

Crick's Nobel Prize, which was auctioned by Heritage, went for $2.27 million, four times more than its estimate, Reuters adds. The purchaser was not identified.

The Associated Press adds that half of the proceeds from the sales at Christie's will go to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, where Crick was a professor, and 20 percent of the Heritage sales will go to the Francis Crick Institute in London, which is scheduled to open in 2015.