Well, here we are: the shiny new home of Genetic Future here at Wired.
I'm excited to be joining the frankly intimidatingly talented blogging team here, and looking forward to seriously blogging again after the last six months of baby-induced semi-sabbatical.
If you want to stay up-to-date, please make sure you subscribe to the new RSS feed. As usual, I'll also share new Genetic Future posts along with other snippets of genomics goodness on Twitter.
For those kind enough to follow me over from ScienceBlogs, you can expect more of the same here at Wired: discussion of recent advances in genomics, updates on the rapidly moving field of DNA sequencing, and a heavy helping of gossip regarding the controversial industry of direct-to-consumer genetic testing. You will have to get used to a new commenting system that requires registration, although the process seems fairly painless (especially for those with a Twitter account, who can use that to sign in). There may also be some minor hitches while I get used to the new blogging system here; please bear with me.
Some background for those joining me for the first time: I'm an Australian geneticist currently based in the UK, where I work on a number of large-scale research projects in human genomics (such as the 1000 Genomes Project). I've been blogging for around three years, firstly on my own site and then over at ScienceBlogs. I'm also co-founder of another website, Genomes Unzipped, a collaborative online experiment in genetic data-sharing that you'll be hearing much more about over the next few months.
There has never been a better time to write about human genetics. A recent wave of technological innovation is making it increasingly easier - and cheaper - for researchers to uncover the genetic basis of human variation in everything from height to disease risk. The same technology is also providing opportunities for those of us who are interested in our own genomes to gain direct access to them. For the first time in history, it is possible for someone with a modest income to peer inside their own DNA; the full impact of this new-found ability is still impossible to predict.
Genetic Future is a blog about the insanely fast-moving science and technology behind modern genomics, about the companies that offer to sell you the use of those technologies to explore your own genome, and about the hobbyists and idealists creating tools to allow you to dig deeper into the information it contains. It's also about my genome: the things I've learnt about myself from purchasing my own genetic tests, and my progress towards obtaining the sequence at all of the six-billion-odd chemical letters that reside in each of my cells.
OK, enough introduction. Let's get started.
