Update: Reuters and more: Glenn Close has genome sequenced
Alert the media: Glenn Close has had her genome sequenced!
Who cares?
I do. I’ve been scared of Glenn Close ever since Fatal Attraction, so I’m eager to see whether the reporting on her genome will ease my fears.
The news comes to us by way of a press release from Illumina, Inc. of San Diego, the genomics company that unraveled Close’s double helix. The company says Close is the first “named female” to have her genome sequenced. (“Publicly identified” would have been better; I doubt that anyone has sequenced a female who is un-named.)
The first public sequencing of a woman is interesting and newsy, and it will be even more interesting if Close decides to make her genome public. Illumina trumpeted the firstness in the lede of its release. Julie Steenhuysen of Reuters made the point much lower in her story, and she let Close make the claim, a little more tentatively. Reuters quoted her as saying “I may be the first.”
Both Reuters and the press release note that Close has mental illness in her family, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. That makes me even more interested in what her genome looks like. Close, however, has apparently not committed to making her genome public. Reuters says she will consider doing so if her genome contains something of interest.
Thomas H. Maugh II, on the Los Angeles Times Booster Shots blog, included in his lede the interesting fact that Illumina says it can now decode a genome in eight weeks for $48,000. But that’s just about all Maugh told us. Rather than mine the implications of this, he mentioned a couple of Close’s roles, quoted from her statement, and let it ride.
I’m a big fan of blogs, which I believe will soon take over the world, if they haven’t already. But blogs sometimes make it too easy for us to slap up a coupla grafs and go home when more reporting is in order. The old show biz cliche was to always “leave ‘em when they’re asking for more,” something Close probably understands. But bloggers need to get us warmed up and engaged, first, before they leave us asking for more. Maugh leaves us blankly staring at an empty stage, wondering whether we’ve shown up on the wrong day.
Thomas Kupper of the San Diego Union-Tribune, for which this is a home-town story, gives us a little more. He quotes Illumina’s CEO as saying that he hopes this kind of celebrity sequencing help the public recognized and deal with questions that come up with sequencing. That’s promotional, of course–the guy makes money doing sequences. But that gives us at least a morsel of information about why we might care about Close’s genome.
I found a few other posts and items regurgitating the press release, but nothing using this as a jumping-off point for discussion about genome sequencing, which could become a routine part of medical care in a few years.
So, yeah. I care about Glenn Close’s genome. But I don’t have much company. As far as I can tell, nobody else has written as much about it as I have here.
UPDATE: Malcom Ritter of the AP tells me that Glenn Close is not the first publicly identified woman to have her genome sequences. That honor apparently goes to Dr. Marjolein Kriek, a clinical geneticist at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
- Paul Raeburn
