Personal Update – Social Media at Human Genome Organisation

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted September 6, 2009 in Business of DNA, DNA in General

The pace around here at Eye on DNA is still nothing like it was before I went on maternity leave last June. But I have another great reason for continuing to neglect this space.

Since the start of my first personal blog in 2003, I have been an enthusiastic believer in the power of social media. When I began science blogging in 2005, I truly understood the importance of citizen media for informing, sharing, and inspiring.

This month I made another move into social media and began working at Soho Square as social media editor. At the same time, I became social media consultant to the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) which many of you know as the folks in charge of gene nomenclature.

But HUGO is more than just nomenclature, the Organization’s mission statement:

to investigate the nature, structure, function and interaction of the genes, genomic elements and genomes of humans and relevant pathogenic and model organisms;
to characterise the nature, distribution and evolution of genetic variation in humans and other relevant organisms;
to study the relationship between genetic variation and the environment in the origins and characteristics of human populations and the causes, diagnoses, treatments and prevention of disease;
to foster the interaction, coordination, and dissemination of information and technology between investigators and the global society in genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, systems biology, and the clinical sciences by promoting quality education, comprehensive communication, and accurate, comprehensive, and accessible knowledge resources for genes, genomes and disease; and,
to sponsor factually-grounded dialogues on the social, legal, and ethical issues related to genetic and genomic information and championing the regionally-appropriate, ethical utilization of this information for the good of the individual and the society.

To help accomplish the above, I will be assisting HUGO in setting up a blog as well as fostering an online (leading to a more active offline) community. I will have more news in the days to come. Meanwhile, please join us at the following: