The latest in a string of cancer genome sequencing papers is now online at Nature.

The Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network, a large consortuim of cancer researchers, has searched the genomes of 206 different brain cancer samples (all glioblastomas) for a variety of aberrations. They're looking for trends: by learning what mutations are common to all of these cancer samples, or what cellular processes are involved, we can come up with more rationally designed treatment strategies.

What's impressive is how quickly the scientific community has exploited new technologies and resources to do this: many of the technologies used in this research either weren't available or were not cost-effective five years ago. Nor could this work have been done without the human genome reference sequence. Scientists always like to hype the latest thing, but we truly haven't seen biomedical research transformed like this since the advent of recombinant DNA technology in the 1970's.