Researchers in Japan have transformed mosquitoes into vaccine-carrying syringes by genetically engineering the insects to express the vaccine for leishmaniasis--a parasitic disease transmitted by the sandfly--in their saliva. According to a study in Insect Molecular Biology, mice bitten by these mosquitoes produced antibodies against the parasite. It's not yet clear whether the immune response was strong enough to protect against infection.

"Following bites, protective immune responses are induced, just like a conventional vaccination but with no pain and no cost," said lead researcher Shigeto Yoshida, from the Jichi Medical University in JapanYoshida, in a press release from the journal. "What's more continuous exposure to bites will maintain high levels of protective immunity, through natural boosting, for a life time. So the insect shifts from being a pest to being beneficial."

Researchers consider the project more of a proof of principle experiment than a viable public health option, at least for now. According to an article on ScienceNow,

There's a huge variation in the number of mosquito bites one person received compared with the next, so people exposed to the transgenic mosquitoes would get vastly different doses of the vaccine; it would be a bit like giving some people one measles jab and others 500 of them. No regulatory agency would sign off on that, says molecular biologist Robert Sinden of Imperial College London. Releasing the mosquitoes would also mean vaccinating people without their informed consent, an ethical no-no. Yoshida concedes that the mosquito would be "unacceptable" as a human vaccine-delivery mechanism.

However, flying vaccinators-or "flying syringes" as some have dubbed them -may have potential in fighting animal disease, says [David O'Brochta, an insect molecular geneticist at the University of Maryland, College Park]. Animals don't need to give their consent, and the variable dosage would be less of a concern.

Incorporating common genetic risk factors into the models typically used to calculate a women's breast cancer risk has little impact on clinical decision-making, such as whether an individual should consider earlier or more frequent mammography or prophylactic drugs, according to a paper published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. The results follow similar studies for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, echoing what has now become a common criticism of genome-wide association studies; that this approach is unlikely to identify genetic risk factors of diagnostic value.

Over the last few years, researchers have used DNA-studded microarrays to quickly search tens of thousands of human genomes for common genetic variations linked to various diseases, dubbed genome-wide association studies. Despite the enormous size of these studies, they have only identified a fraction of the source of the genetic risk of disease. And the vast majority account for a very small change in risk in a given individual. (This is in contrast to rare genetic variants, like BRCA1, which substantially increase a women's risk of developing breast cancer.)

To analyze the potential impact of common, breast cancer-linked variations, researchers from the National Cancer Institute combined data from five studies of breast cancer. Taken together, these studies compared 5,590 breast cancer patients to 5,998 women without cancer, mostly white and age 50 and 79. The team employed a commonly breast cancer risk model, which uses medical, reproductive and family history, to calculate an individual's risk of developing cancer over the next five years. They found the risk score was similar to that calculated using 10 breast cancer variations recently identified in genome wide association studies. But combining the two risk models had little impact. "When we included these newly discovered genetic factors, we found some improvement in the performance of risk models for breast cancer, but it was not enough improvement to matter for the great majority of women." said Sholom Wacholder, Ph.D., senior investigator in NCI's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG), in a statement.

For most women in the study, the inclusive model did not substantially change their personal estimated risk of developing breast cancer beyond the Gail model calculations. Overall, using the inclusive model reclassified 26 percent of women to a higher risk category; 28 percent to a lower risk category; and left 46 percent in the same category of risk score. The shifts from one category to another were generally too small to influence clinical decision-making.

That's probably not welcome news to direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies, such as Navigenics and DecodeMe, which screen for these types of variants. Kari Stefansson, founder of Decode, argues that the results do show that common variants are useful, but that we still have a way to go.

My hope is that this entire argument is soon moot. Whole genome sequencing, which can identify both rare and common variants, seems finally poised to fulfill its role in illuminating the genomics of disease. A handful of papers published over the last few months have demonstrated that sequencing can identify genetic variants linked to some rare diseases, and scientists hope the same approach can be applied to more common ones. While a $48,000 genome sequence--the cost of Illumina's personal sequencing service--is still a lot compared to Decode's $500 cancer screen, the price is dropping rapidly. (No one knows yet how much more bang you'd get for your buck.) Complete Genomics, a startup in California, will soon offer bulk sequencing services for about $20,000 a genome, with a $5,000 price tag not far behind.

A Google-Intel-Sony partnership will soon offer TVs and set-top boxes that make it easier to browse the Web on a TV, according to a report by The New York Times. The Google TV platform will be based on the Android operating system and will be open to developers, who will presumably be able to create downloadable TV apps, like games.

While some TVs and boxes already allow Web access, these generally don't offer full web surfing. Products that let you play video from a computer on a TV have also been around for a while. But the rising popularity of video sites like YouTube and Hulu.com may mean we'll be seeing more Internet options--potentially even related social networking services--on TVs. Logitech will offer a remote control with a tiny keyboard to aid in web surfing on Google TV.

Google's venture into TV was preceded by its Google TV Ads system, which sells ads on some televisions systems and figures out where an advertiser's ad should be placed based on keywords (similar to its web advertising). Several years ago, Google also tested a software which used a computer's built-in microphone to listen and identify audio from a user's TV to target related ads on the user's computer.