Evolution is easier than we think, and one great way to see why is to look at what we know about protein evolution. Proteins have been evolving on our planet for about 4 billion years. Their appearance almost certainly precedes the beginning of life itself. We still don't know how the whole thing got off the ground, but once the stage was set (in living cells), evolution began exploring Protein Space.

I am happy to say that the latest issue of The R Journal includes a paperdescribing rentrez,the rOpenSci package for retrieving data from the National Center for Biotechnology Information(NCBI). The NCBI is one of the most important sources of biological data. The centreprovides access to information on 28 million scholarly articles through PubMed and 250million DNA sequences through GenBank.

We humans think we're pretty special. Here's Hamlet, in the speech that gave this blog its name: Kemble in the role of Hamlet. Courtesy of Wellcome Images.

A truly human-specific gene, not merely a human-specific version of an animal gene or a mammal gene or a primate gene — that is something particularly interesting.

The Human Genetics Massive: #ASHG15 in Baltimore This week the human genetics “tribe“ (as NIH Director Francis Collins referred to “his people” here) have muscled out the Eastside and Westside crews to take over the Baltimore waterfront for the yearly American Society of Human Genetics (#ASHG15) meeting.

The software application PLINK is one of the most widely used tools in bioinformatics, particularly for genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that look at genetic variants in different individuals to see if any variant is associated with a trait. With the advent of the thousand dollar genome, the computational demands being made on such programs are exploding.

by Robert Hoskin (University of Sheffield, UK) Short-listed for Access to Understanding 2013 To what extent do biological and environmental factors influence how an organism develops? This question, often framed as the ‘nature-nurture debate’, is one of the most fundamental problems that science has to address.

During my flyfishing vacation last year, pretty much nothing was happening on this blog. Now that I’ve migrated the blog to WordPress, I can actually schedule posts to appear when in fact I’m not even at the computer. I’m using this functionality to re-blog a few posts from the archives during the month of august while I’m away. This post is from April 19, 2011:

Singapore – a wonderful city of diverse cultures and culinary affair, is not just about the infamous chilli crab or signature cocktail, Singapore Sling, but from the 13-19 April the vibrant country plays host to one of the largest meetings in genetics and genomics.

The Human Variome Project (HVP) Beijing Meeting has officially ended (though a number of delegates will be busy tomorrow at the Advisory Council meeting). The energy and commitment towards better understanding and treatment of heritable diseases displayed by both the speakers and participants was great to see. Peter Taschner’s talk on the Leiden Open (source) Variation Database (LOVD) system was very well received, and a number of