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The complete sequence of a human Y chromosome

nature.com

101–110 of 232 posts

Re: The complete sequence of a human Y chromosome

#101
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have spent the better part of the past year looking obsessively over genomics papers for cancer and I've grown very fond of the field. Are there any positions at Google/ companies you wold suggest me to look into? I'm coming from algortrading/ ML research with ML MSc.

You could try Calico. They are an Alphabet company that specifically studies aging. There how a good amount of machine learning roles. However biotech typically pays less than finance or software. https://calicolabs.com/careers/

Thanks!

Re: The complete sequence of a human Y chromosome

#102
post #97
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The code how to build a sperm and an egg is inside the human DNA, isn't it?

Given code written for unknown hardware... can you execute it?

Given that the code contains the instructions how to make the hardware - if one is very smart than yes.

Re: The complete sequence of a human Y chromosome

#103
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think like an ML engineer, the genome is a feature vector 3B bases (or 6B binary bits) long that is highly redundant (many sections contain repeats and other regions that are correlated to other regions), and the mapping between that feature vector and an individual's specific properties (their "phenotype", which could be their height at full maturity, or their eye color, or hair properties, or propensity to d…

Fascinating, are there lots of people looking at genetics with this ML kind of lens?

Yes. For example when word2vec came out, immediately there were people trying similar approaches to protein sequences. Transformers work better.

Re: The complete sequence of a human Y chromosome

#104
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating, are there lots of people looking at genetics with this ML kind of lens?

Sure, although I'm not aware of anybody who is contemplating quite the level I believe is necessary to really nail the problem into the ground. When I worked at Google, I proposed that Google build a datacenter-sized sequencing center in Iowa or Nebraska near its data centers, buy thousands of sequencers, and run industrial-scale sequencing, push the data straight to the cloud over fat fiber, followed by machine lear…

But why Google? This is what big pharma are doing. Also you can outsource the data collection part. See for example UK Biobank. Their data are available to multiple companies after some period so it makes it more cost efficient.

Re: The complete sequence of a human Y chromosome

#105
post #68
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lincoln Stein is great, and perl was certainly critical to many processes, but it was and remains fairly niche in genomics, which used much more C++, Java, and later Python. IMHO the person who "saved the genome project" was WJ Kent, who developed the assembler, BLAT, that the public project needed. I strive to point out that he wasn't a sole hero, nor was Lincoln. What I really like about BLAT is that while Celera w…

I know hn isn't the place for memes, but, I'm obligated. Imagine what they could do with a beowulf cluster of pentium pros?

They weren't using pentium pros, they were using Alpha's because the memory interconnect between a beowulf cluster of pentium pros would be orders of magnitude slower. So likely 'the same, but much slower'.

Re: The complete sequence of a human Y chromosome

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many genes are highly conserved or consistent enough. E.g.: if there's a 1% difference between two people, then it's a bit like two very unique sentences that have a couple of small typos. They're sill recognisable, and it's also still pretty obvious that they're the "same". A gene sequence allows researchers to determine the amino acids that are coded for, and from those, which proteins match which genes. This can b…

But you can only know that by having a large sample of very “stable” (have few genetic irregularities) gene samples compared to a large pool of samples from people with very narrow and pronounced gene irregularities, right? Is this why it’s so hard? This feels more like a healthcare records keeping people and less like an “actually reading the data problem”. I can’t help but feel like some form of single payer health…

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