Blog

We blog about genomics. We also make a platform for open-source analysis of next generation data in the cloud. Hello.

Seven Bridges talks genomics with MongoDB and AstraZeneca

  Our CEO, Deniz Kural, recently joined Jason Tetrault, Architect at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, for a panel discussion of topics in genomics and pharmaceuticals in an event hosted by MongoDB. Before the panel, Jason gave what he described as a “fairly inaccurate overview of genetics processing” from the sequencer to the …

Written by carol

Microsoft Research CABI 2013

This Monday we went to Microsoft’s beautiful NERD building for Microsoft Research’s 2013 conference in Computational Aspects of Biological Information (CABI). The pastries were good and the presentations were even better. Jim Collins spoke about implementing flip-flops in bacteria, and about the prospects of biocomputation more generally; Pardis Sabeti discussed …

Written by Nate

The GTEx methods debate

This week, a dialogue erupted around the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Consortium and its methods for analyzing RNA-Seq data. Tracking the debate will take you through Twitter threads, into blog posts, down comments sections, past PubMed entries, and over Nature‘s login wall.

Written by Kate Blair

Better sequences (and fewer homopolymer errors) for Ion Torrent

The short read files that Ion Torrent’s sequencing machines give us still contain many homopolymer errors: errors in the number of bases called when a single nucleotide occurs more than once in sequence. This makes alignment harder and drowns real indels in a sea of noise. These homopolymer errors arise …

Written by Nate

A mystery muscle lincRNA

We know that our whole genome is distributed to (almost) every cell of our bodies. This fact can be used both to surprise introductory biology students and to usefully refine a fundamental scientific question. Instead of merely asking how it comes to be that different parts of our bodies have …

Written by Nate

RNA-Seq Interactive Literature Review

RNA-Seq is fast becoming the top method for examining the transcriptional activity of genomes. In the five years since the first publications described the technology, RNA-Seq has enabled the discovery of new transcripts in well-studied genomes, challenged our views of imprinting, offered insights into the biology of cancer, and transformed new …

Written by Kate Blair

Short read alignment: seeding

In my last post I explained some of the basics of short read alignment algorithms. Go read it if you like; if not, recall that: Many modern alignment algorithms rely on what is called seeding and extending. “Seeding” is finding exact matches of part of the read with part of the …

Written by Nate

Short read alignment: an introduction

Biologists today often find themselves with lots of–say, 10^6–short sequences of DNA from a sample, and their ability to do scientifically useful things with those sequences depends on their ability to align those sequences to a reference sequence. Many of the hard and important projects in genomics either are alignment …

Written by Nate

Seven Bridges Platform wins BioIT World Best of Show

We’ve been working pretty hard over the past few years to build a tool for next generation sequence data analysis that we love. So we were very pleased to see Seven Bridges Platform win Best of Show in the Informatics Data & Tools division at BioIT World 2013. Seven Bridges …

Written by Kate Blair

We are always engaged in research and development, working to build the future of genomics, science, and health. Let's work together. We'd love to hear about your projects and challenges, so drop us a line. get in touch