a

Today’s big news in the DNA research field is the result of professor Renee Reijo Pera’s team at Stanford University: primitive human sperm and eggs and the germ cells that make them have been created from embryonic stem cells.

Media has gone wild over the news, rating it anything in between the ultimate infertility treatment to artificial parent-less child manufacturing.

Most scientists claim that this work is a way of getting closer to understanding what hides behind the miracle of a new human life being created and how genetic mutation and diseases form at their earlier stage.

The research of course aims at creating synthetic sperm and eggs in the laboratory as well, in order to allow men and women who make none to have their own genetic children. But this dream remains at least five years away.

“Our goal is to understand how you make eggs and sperm,” said professor Pera. “We know almost nothing about human reproductive development, and this gives us a new way to investigate it. The hope is some day to help those who are infertile.”

The big question is of course ethical.

Is the offspring of a synthetic cell actually someone’s child? Is it right to invest in these kind of studies in an over-populated world struck by disease and famine? Isn’t infertility Mother nature’s response to a non-suitable genetic layout?

Here at Swiss DNA Bank we believe that such delicate matters are very difficult to judge.

Personally I feel that if the synthetic egg or sperm derives from someone’s tissue, the bond between parent and child will be as legitimate and strong as the one that derives from natural conception. Couples who have no children should have the chance of fulfilling this core human need.

At the same time I understand those who are concerned with how scientific funding is invested. These studies are expensive in terms of money, time and number of experts working on the project.

But I guess that if we dig down to the bottom of the matter, we will eventually stumble into man’s freedom of choice. Choice of being a mother or a father, choice of dedicating one’s life to such studies, choice of seeking a better understanding of genetics and the functioning life itself.

Our DNA storage service has definitely nothing to do with how one ultimately decides to use his own cells. We just provide the freedom to store yourself as a whole.

Luca Boschin

COO Swiss DNA Bank

The beginning of this week left many Americans stranded without any sidekick support. More specifically, I’m talking about T-Mobile’s phone data backup failure.

“Sidekick” is a celebrity’s-pick telephone and e-mail device distributed by T-Mobile, brought to fame by a very-out-there advertising campaign which featured Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg and other big celeb names.

The data stored in these phones was actually remotely hosted by Microsoft’s servers, which means that users’ phonebooks, SMS, e-mails, etc.,  were not stored inside the phones themselves but rather, on cloud servers. Very convenient at first glance: you could have hundreds of names, numbers, addresses and messages handy without actually over-challenging your device. All you needed to retrieve data was an Internet connection.

But apparently, the servers crashed. And for some reason, still undisclosed, the backup servers crashed as well. Or at least someone forgot to press the “Save” button.

So, thousands of users woke up to a blank phone.

T-Mobile stated there is apparently nothing they can do to retrieve the lost data, and it is refunding a paltry $20 to those struck by the Web lightening.

What does that tell us?

It tells us that there is no such thing as a too-expensive or over-protected data backup system. Knowledge, information and contacts are some of our most precious assets and must be regarded as such.

This is why we here at Swiss DNA Bank never get tired of stressing the fundamental importance of safe and guaranteed backup.

The idea of the revolutionary storage of data forever came from my personal need to feel secure about information storage. I wanted to know that my memories and my biological mark were in a safe place that my heirs could access one day.

There are many other backup services out there. But where are their servers physically located? Who is managing them? What happens in case a disaster hits the storage location?

These are questions that we should ask ourselves when we put our data in someone else’s hands.

Can they provide you with straight answers and Swiss-quality assurances?

Well, we certainly can.

Luca Boschin

COO Swiss DNA Bank

As human genome sequencing becomes a hotter subject in today’s medical field, IBM just announced it will join the race to provide cheap DNA analysis.

Many specialized labs, companies and universities have been working on the project for years, and IBM seems to be a bit behind in the game, but tech journalists have gone wild over the news: PC World says that IBM will “expand the life span of humans,” while the New York Times’ John Markoff predicts that the company will cut the cost of DNA sequencing to under $100, “making a personal genome cheaper than a ticket to a Broadway play.”

The IBM approach to genome sequencing is based on passing strings of DNA through tiny holes, just a nanometer wide, drilled on semiconducting materials. Since DNA is charged, by applying a voltage they should be able to get the DNA through the holes. During this process the DNA reading should take place, even though IBM hasn’t yet said exactly how.

IBM has taken up quite a challenge since there are tens of companies ahead of it in the low-cost genome sequencing business. In their favor, we have to consider that DNA analysis is becoming more and more about storage and interpretation of a large quantity of data, an art that IBM has mastered. IBM is also painting this as a sort of exploratory project; a scientist there tells PC World that “We’re in a process in which we will have milestones … [over] three years. At the end of three years we will know if it’s feasible or not.”

In three years’ time this sector’s scene will be totally different from now. It is hard to predict who will win the low-cost challenge: at the Personal Genomes meeting in Cold Spring Harbor last month, sequencing pioneer George Church listed 17 competitors in the “ultra low-cost sequencing space”.