Evil Genius

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArtic ... MOSOME.xml


Break through in science.

"This achievement effectively closes the book on an important volume of the Human Genome Project," said Dr Simon Gregory

When i read that, i thought "Genome Soliders."


Discuss.

Shouldn't this be in Current Events?

Yes.

So, how long until we get super humans?

not before the holy nuclear wars.

arke wrote:Yes.

So, how long until we get super humans?

They are already walking among us, but the governement is hiding this from us.

Quest wrote:not before the holy nuclear wars.

This and Quest's sig-graphic together make for "best comment ever."

wow killfile just handed me an award.
i feel tingy all over.
=P

is there any real life proxy for the 'umbrella corporation'?

Wow, just finished reading that. Not a very lengthy article, but a good read. I have a fair degree of interest of genetics myself, it is one of the courses in University I enjoyed. I read this in the paper this morning, but it wasn't really particularly lengthy and I just managed to notice it amongst the whole over bloated 'celebrity divorces' crap with McCartney's and Greg Norman's wives.

The next world war will be genetics. zomg, the comic books speakth truth!

halfnhalf wrote: Break through in science.
Discuss.

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.

So it's a good tool, but doesn't provide any information from a mechanistic point of view.

Edit:

"This achievement effectively closes the book on an important volume of the Human Genome Project," said Dr Simon Gregory

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.

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.

Man how many of these so called "breakthroughs" has there been the last couple of years.....

The proof is often a short none saying article.

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.

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.

I will *not* talk about the evolutionary relevance of it, but yeah, it's important from this standpoint.

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.

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?

In some cases, it's the former: understanding how aerodynamic lift worked was a major breakthrough that created the entire felid of aeronautical engineering. Once lift, and drag made sense, the rest becomes math and materials science -- at least until the sound barrier.

In other cases it's the latter: everyone and their brother understood that splitting atoms released assloads of energy* and every government worth its salt figured out that you could make a bomb that way if you could get the details right. It took billions of dollars but it was the application of that theory that changed the world, not the theory itself.

When all's said and done, I think history judges the importance of discovery v. application by which one was harder and more involved. The jury is still out on genetics.


* Einstein's cleverness with the E=mc^2 bit had more to do with "how much." Science is traditionally unenthused with "a lot" as an answer.

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?

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 ).
But let's not go off-topic. The question here is if fundamental science (sequencing the genome) is appropriately presented to us.

I agree with Killfile. It all depends.

To me, though, I believe just understanding the human genome is a big first step in applying it. It woudl be a breakthrough in the sense that it can't be applied until understood.

i wonder who was the lucky guy to get to have his DNA mapped.

In the case of the HGP it's a pool of a dozen persons (approximately, don't know the exact number) from different origins.

Craig Venter had his own DNA sequenced for the private consortium project.