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Called Back Up

The US is reconvening its National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity panel, ScienceInsider reports. This move comes on the heels of revelations of lab safety mistakes involving anthrax, influenza, and smallpox.

However, the panel will reunite with 11 of its 23 members as the others have been dismissed. In an email Sunday, Mary Groesch from the US National Institutes of Health informed those members that "a new slate of NSABB members [had] been approved as [their] replacements."

"We had no inkling it was going to happen this way," Northern Arizona University's Paul Keim, an inaugural panel member and former NSABB chair, tells ScienceInsider.

The panel was formed in 2005 and most recently grappled with the consequences of publishing dual-use research like that of an influenza strain developed to be more transmissible through the air. One panel member notes that the panel last met in November 2012.

"I hope that the US government effectively uses the NSABB to address the shortcomings associated with the three incidents," Keim adds.

The Scan

Study Examines Insights Gained by Adjunct Trio RNA Sequencing in Complex Pediatric Disease Cases

Researchers in AJHG explore the diagnostic utility of adding parent-child RNA-seq to genome sequencing in dozens of families with complex, undiagnosed genetic disease.

Clinical Genomic Lab Survey Looks at Workforce Needs

Investigators use a survey approach in Genetics in Medicine Open to assess technologist applications, retention, and workforce gaps at molecular genetics and clinical cytogenetics labs in the US.

Study Considers Gene Regulatory Features Available by Sequence-Based Modeling

Investigators in Genome Biology set sequence-based models against observational and perturbation assay data, finding distal enhancer models lag behind promoter predictions.

Genetic Testing Approach Explores Origins of Blastocyst Aneuploidy

Investigators in AJHG distinguish between aneuploidy events related to meiotic missegregation in haploid cells and those involving post-zygotic mitotic errors and mosaicism.