Break through in science.
When i read that, i thought "Genome Soliders.""This achievement effectively closes the book on an important volume of the Human Genome Project," said Dr Simon Gregory
Discuss.
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When i read that, i thought "Genome Soliders.""This achievement effectively closes the book on an important volume of the Human Genome Project," said Dr Simon Gregory
It's important but certainly not a breakthrough, because 1-the draft sequence has been published for 5 years now (2001 or 2002, not sure), what they mainly did is close the gaps and correct the misalignments. They are also doing that for the others chromosomes. Plus all polymorphisms (variations of the sequence from 1 individual to the other) are not known, so it is still a work in progress 2- Sequence means nothing if you don't know the regulation patterns of the genes.halfnhalf wrote: Break through in science.
Discuss.
As he said, it doesn't mean that the HGP is done, just a part of it. I don't think it "closes the book" though, because of polymorphisms."This achievement effectively closes the book on an important volume of the Human Genome Project," said Dr Simon Gregory
It is useful, but not for the reason they want us to believe. Without it, gene identification would be much much slower, and it can also provide some regulatory insights by comparative genomics. It has some great potential, breakthrough is probably not the appropriate word, milestone maybe.Daedelus wrote:The important thing is now to map all this crap to something useful. Sure, we know what makes up all of our chromosomes. That's great. We won't start seeing true breakthroughs until we identify what each gene is doing and how it causes traits, diseases etc.
Daedelus wrote:I never said this wasn't important. Until you start seeing real-world applications that change the way we (as a people) survive and live, I'm not calling it a breakthrough.
I don't really believe in this debate, since applied science must start with fundamental discovery in molecular biology. At least if you go after the breakthrough. Otherwise you're just polishing and repeating whats' already known (i'm not saying it is useless ).Killfile wrote:Daedelus wrote:I never said this wasn't important. Until you start seeing real-world applications that change the way we (as a people) survive and live, I'm not calling it a breakthrough.
That's the classic pure science v. applied science debate -- what's more important: understanding how the world works or taking that understanding and doing things with it?