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Human Gene Count Slashed
jd continues: "This has the potential for making life extremely interesting for genetic engineers, given that both individual genes and interactions between genes must be proportionately more complex, in order to get the same level of complexity out. Half the number of genes equates to twice the information encoded in forms other than discrete physical blocks of code.
There is no mention in the article of a story running in 2002 of genetic therapies unexpectedly causing cancer, although if you now factor in the increased complexity of interactions, it is possible that such side-effects can be better understood and therefore prevented. The new estimates, therefore, are more than just idle curiosity but have the potential for impacting how the science is approached."
Call me old-fashioned, but I really despise when "Intelligent Design" proponents pop up in threads like this. "See, the number of genes to work with is so much lower than you'd expect, so the complexity between each gene is more complex than chance would dictate. Ergo Something had to have designed it."
Please. I find that such distrust in the machinations of Nature itself shows us how narrow minded these "scientists" are. "I can't understand it, so God must have done it," essentially. This does not open the door to further research and understanding. On the contrary it closes the door because there is nothing more to be understood beyond "God did it".
Nature is a truly amazing thing. Evolution, Physics, Gravitation, the Stars, the Cells, everything is absolutely beautiful. Why the need to spoil Gaia with your imaginary friend?
The new estimate, of between 20,000 to 25,000 genomes is marginally less than the 27,000 for the Arabidopsis, a flowering plant in the mustard family. Earlier estimates had placed the number of genomes at around 44,000 - or even as high as 100,000.
AFAIK, there's a lot more research going into the human genome than into the Arabidopsis one. So one would naturally presume that the number of human genes would be known better.
But if the estimate for the number of human genes is subject to so much variation, how can you be so sure of that for the Arabidopsis?
Is this a meaningful comparison?
(Not to mention that the entire premise seems to be flawed..)
How long before someone blames this on Bill Gates or George Bush?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Any good software programmer knows that good design and elegance beats bloat every time.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Woah! More than one paragraph? Will Slashdot get rid of italics too, and start having quality articles?
There is no mention in the article of a story running in 2002 of genetic therapies unexpectedly causing cancer,
Nor should there be; general estimates of the number of genes have nothing to do with mechanisms by which gene therapy might cause cancer. Nor is it unexpected that gene therapy can cause cancer; that has always been a known risk.
although if you now factor in the increased complexity of interactions, it is possible that such side-efects can be better understood and therefore prevented.
Anything is possible, I suppose. But common ways in which gene therapy could cause cancer are already understood. Doubtlessly, there are many more possibilities, but to identify them requires a specific understanding of those "interactions", something that is being worked on anyway.
Let look at that stats:
Terrorist kill ~ 3000 people in 2001 and it becomes a focus of the US nation. While:
Breast cancer kills > 40,000 / year
Prostate cancer kills > 30,000 / year
Diabetes kills > 70,000 / year
The numbers world wide of course are much larger.
Yeah OT I know but these kind of discoveries convince me our priorities are misplaced.
On the contrary, the complexity now increases. There are many genes that act in completely differen't roles depending on the cell type (nerve, epidermal, etc.). So a common language changes from cell type to cell type-- if one would even call it a common language. There is a large part of Bioinformatics/Computational Biology that deals with trying to determine interaction networks between genes. It's very complex, and difficult to deal with.
:) ).
With less genes we then expect to have a larger amount of downstream interactions between other genes. It might seem that with less genes then we have less to worry about, but we have already speculated for a long time that gene regulatory networks are complex.
To use an analogy (for all you computer geeks), it's like a programmer trying to read poorly modularized code. When you have no idea what class is doing what, and how they interact with other classes (as every class has multiple roles and talks to multiple other classes) then it is difficult to understand why the program behaves the way it does. If the program had many classes that were well modularized and designed with very distinct roles, then it would be easier to understand why things work the way they do.
With less genes and increased complexity we have an even more difficult task. It also highlights some of the reasons on why microarray analysis has not done what we expected it to do. Increasing the complexity and dependency between genes means that we probably are going to take a longer time understanding and extrapolating information from all these networks (which means more job security for me
It might just be that one who is a true scientist, AND a creationist
Most scientists regard creation science as, at best, a pseudoscience.
Some creationists posit that certain assumptions, procedures, theories, and findings of science, particularly the theory of evolution through natural selection, are scientifically incorrect. Creation science is a modern movement that attacks these ideas on scientific grounds and proposes alternative theories that are more compatible with creationism. This article uses the term creation scientist to mean a scientist who believes in creation science. Because creation science is not accepted by most scientists, this article uses the term mainstream scientist to mean a scientist who does not believe in creation science.
The term "creation science" covers a broad range of beliefs. There are many different creation scientific theories, each of which has its own supporters and detractors, both within and without the creation science community. Additionally, there are differing interpretations of what creation science is among those who consider themselves creation scientists. Some creation scientists do not seek to challenge mainstream scientists. Others deny the applicability of the scientific method and Occam's razor to their religiously-inspired beliefs about the physical world.
Not all creationists are creation scientists. Some creationists view scientific truth as separate from spiritual truth and are unconcerned by apparent contradictions between the two. Others believe that neither mainstream science nor creation science is appropriate, and prefer to be guided by revelation alone.
Creation science has been criticized by many mainstream scientists for making scientific errors. Consequently most mainstream scientists regard creation science as, at best, a pseudoscience. (Specific arguments and rebuttals are listed below.)
Many critics of creation science believe that all creation scientists attempt to falsely disguise the Biblical story of creation as science (Arthur, 1996). United States federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court, have been receptive to this argument, and have overturned various state laws seeking to give creation science equal time with the theory of evolution in public schools. See, for example, Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987) and McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F.Supp. 1255 (1982); also Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 US 602 (1971).
On the contrary, the complexity now increases.
I could not resist
No the complexity does not increase. Its like it ever waas. We only know now, that it is not that simple as we allways thought.
Some monthes ago, we thought it was simple. We realized things did not really work that good (gen therapy etc.) and wondered why. Now we know: oops, its not simple! And now we can look how to tackle the complexity.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.