Earlier this week, the Oversight and Investigation subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce committee of the US House of Representatives undertook an investigation of direct-to-consumer (DTC) testing. To some, this investigation was long overdue; to others, it was a witch hunt by intrusive regulators. In any case, it’s pretty clear that this event will lead to regulatory oversight that will permanently shape genetic testing. Below, I’ve provided a few links with comments and highlights. (more…)

As many of you know by now, I left Genentech in September to join UC Berkeley as the Chief Scientist of the Genome Commons. I’m part of QB3, the California Institute for Quantitative Biology (no I don’t understand the abbreviation either).

I’m collaborating with Steven Brenner, Jasper Rine, and Lior Pachter at Berkeley, and Robert Nussbaum and Bernie Lo at UCSF, to address the technical, scientific, clinical, and ethical opportunities associated with interpreting genomic data. It’s an exciting time and an exciting place.

To be sure, I’ll be posting a lot more about that here.