Learning About Genetic Engineering On The Net

Norm asks: "How does one use the WWW to learn about the current and future state of the human genome project, corporate research into potential genetic manipulation of humans, and human Genetic Engineering in general? This is a subject, that while touched upon in the news and exploited in popular culture (e.g., the film 'Gattaca'), does not receive the fact-based, in-depth coverage it deserves. Right now, we are facing a serious social, political and philosophical dilemma: what happens when those of us in our 20s-30s are in our 70s-80s, and the new generation of people are genetically enhanced super-humans? Ideas? Pointers?"

Comments

Some web sites...open source as well...

[ewanb]

It always amuses me how clueless slashdot generally as group is about these things....
Despite best efforts otherwise. It comes up as
an "Ask Slashdot" related question regularly;
slashdot posts pseudo-science stories or op-ed
about cloning etc, and yet... slashdot hasn't
attempted to *contact the actual scientists*
involved to get their opinion.

Yes - I have suggested this as an interview topic
a number of times. Slashdot editorials are more
interested in "wow-science" stories than real
science. It annoys me. (but I still read slashdot).

Here are some pointers:

The largest public sequencing center in the world

http://www.sanger.ac.uk/

The US biological information portal

http://www.ncbi.nln.nih.gov/

The European biological information portal

http://www.ebi.ac.uk/

Some open source projects in this area:

(The bio* group.)

http://bio.perl.org/

http://www.biojava.org/

http://www.biopython.org/

http://www.bioxml.org/

Open source genome annotation project

http://www.ensembl.org/

Some Good Info

[Syn.Terra]

Human Genome Project Information:
http://www.ornl.gov/TechRe sources/Human_Genome/home.html

Human Genome Program, Genome Research:
http://www.er.doe.gov/production /ober/hug_top.html

National Human Genome Research Institute:
http://www.nhgri.nih.gov/

On a more philosophical note, when those who are in their adolescence find themselves looking at a generation which has had their genes tampered, there will be prejudice. Lots of it. It can't be avoided.

But what about those who got vaccines at birth? Those who never had to worry about smallpox, polio, etc.? Every generation we go through is healthier than the last, constantly improving. Genetic research will be an issue, obviously, but it's not that unbelivable or radical. Just another step in the same direction.
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Try NCBI

[rgmoore]

One resource I'd strongly recommend is the National Center for Biotechnology Information. I'm a professional working in the field of Proteomics (the protein equivalent of Genomics) and NCBI is an outstanding clearinghouse of information. It also has good links to other sites. If you really want to see some of the science that's going on using genomic information (and are willing to put up with a somewhat dry, utilitarian attitude), it's a good place to look.