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3rd Chromosome Deciphered

Posted by chrisd on from the all-your-bases-belong-to-us dept.

veeoh writes: "Another chapter in the human book of life has been published. Scientists working as part of the Human Genome Project(including some from the Wellcome Trust) have deciphered the complete genetic instructions of a third chromosome, one of the 24 bundles of DNA that carry our genetic material. The BBC has an article about the discovery"

2 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Poor practice by lavaforge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I for one am glad that my government is competing with the private sector. This doubling of the research makes sure that it is more reliable when it is finished.

    How would you like to get a revolutionary new cancer drug, only to find out that the shotgunning method used by Celera missed a few steps? With the government and Celera both having data, errors can be found and corrected before they cost someone dearly.

  2. Re:Comparison to mice chromosomes? by barawn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, it's worse than that - chromosomes don't say "make hair like this" - they say "make this protein", and that's -all- they say. To paraphrase a great quote from Alpha Centuari (the game, yes) "You cannot take the gene for an elephant's trunk and put it onto a giraffe, and get a giraffe with an elephant's trunk, because there IS no gene for an elephant's trunk. What you can do with genes is chemistry, because genes code for chemicals."

    That said, you don't know HOW a particular protein will interact in a given host unless you know the rest of the chemistry for that host. Stick human growth hormone in a fish, and it won't grow - thus, if you stuck the gene that codes for HGH into a fish, it won't get bigger either.

    Then again, all of this is somewhat moot, because for the most part, they do understand a good deal of the biochemistry of animals (including mice) and it's very similar to that of humans.