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New Class of Genes Discovered
HarryGenes writes "Reuters is reporting that Scientists Find New Type of Gene in Junk DNA. The research from Harvard Medical School describes a discovery in the Yeast Genome of a new class of gene that regulates the neighboring gene through the production of its RNA product. This has much broader implications than the article lets on to. Assuming these same type of genes exist in Humans and other organisms, the whole science behind gene expression and gene mapping will be changed dramatically. This type of mechanism can explain a lot of the 'unexplainable'. This is really exciting. I have been working in gene mapping for years and always felt that the 'junk' was there for a reason."
My biology-majoring school (I mean, university) friends, both in undergrad and graduate school did, in point of their own words, pick biology because of the minimal math. Those people are now runnng biotech and pharma companies today. Statistically significant? - well, a dozen data points. Even my own sister, who is a PhD in biology and director of operations at a major biotech firm, has told me the same - she picked biology over engineering or physics, in part because of the milder math requirement. She is quite good at math I should note and probably could have easily done physics or EE.
I am thankful that bioinformatics curricula are becoming so prominent. It's a step in the right direction vis-a-vis the true complexity of the biological system. I think the profession is trending to greater mathematic sophistication but technical knowledge and expectations are always generational. I'm still involved in a number of proteomics and metabolic circuit projects so I see it first-hand. Unfortunately nothing in these will be used by the biotech industry for a good 5-10 years. Academic lab projects != commercial R&D projects.
I have read the original article, thank you. My comment was specifically with regard to my actual conversations with actual PhD's in biology running actual top-ten (earnings, reputation, your pick) biotechnology and pharma companies. This type of origianl journal article's discovery, from what I've seen personally, actually surprises folks who I would have thought/hoped knew better, but clearly don't, despite their PhDs (my sister excepted, of course). Admittedly even PhDs can become PHBs when they become VPs.
The profit motive causes as much corner-cutting in biotech as any other commercial field. Further, the opinions of those without the "gold standard" degree (in biotech that would be a PhD in biology) are discounted as much as they are in other industries, which leads to naive strategies and decisions despite the availability of other voices (sounds like Iraq). Similar things happen elsewhere: try getting promoted at Agilent above group manager without an EE degree - it will never happen! It causes the same blindspot problem.