Years Of Human Genome Data Lost In UCSC Fire

dsavitsk links to a New York Times article which reports that several years of data related to the human genome project have been lost in a fire at the University of California at Santa Cruz, seemingly with no backup.

Comments

Read the damn art, data NOT lost!!!

[karrde]

The data was not what was lost. It's the actuall genetic strains that have been cultivating over the past 14 years. The lead of the project says that it may take that long to re-generate the same strains...

No mention of Data ...

[gus goose]

Why must we assume that what was lost was data/computers.

From my take on the article, it was physical strands of DNA / biological matter which was lost.

gus

Backups

[leastsquares]

The fire probably didn't destroy much (or any) electronic data. But the genetic strains should have been "backed up" just as any of us know that we should backup our data.

My girlfriend's previous employment was in a lab that appears similar to this blackened one. They carried out research using cell lines with genetic traits that had taken years to develop. These cells can generally be frozen for later use, but since the freezer is in the same building a fire could destroy that too. So they donated cell-lines to other research groups, on the condition that they stored a portion of the sample.

Accidents happen. Data-loss doesn't need to.

I've got the missing data...

[ConceptJunkie]

...and I'll sell it to them for $10 million.

int main( ) {
for int i = 0 to MAX_BASES_NEEDED do
switch ( rand( 4 ) ) do
case 0
print A
break
case 1
print C
break
case 2
print T
break
case 3
print G
break
end
end

return 0
}

Let me just rattle on a bit to try to get past the lameness filter. It seems to me, if the lameness filter really worked, Slashdot might be pretty hungry for comments. I'm not saying I don't make a lot of lameness myself, but calling something like this a "lameness" filter would be like checking if someone is breathing and calling it an intelligence test.

Furthermore, how could a site for "nerds" be set up to filter out a small snippet of source code. Hello! Earth to /.

Anyhow, I'm hoping that if I spew enough lame but not-lame-looking text I can actually post, what I thought was an amusing joke, but /. might thwart my budding comedy career.

In desperation I have now changed my nicely formatted C++ code to pseudo-code.