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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."
Does this level of complexity shrink a little as well as grow a little due to less genomes being in existence? I think while the interactions are common maybe when that common "language" is found then it will make things easier.
The iPod Lite Project taking orders soon.
Step 1: Using stem cell research create a new human-like lifeform with many more genes than humans that will have incredible power
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit
This is particularly interesting because with less genes then there are less genes that can interact with each other (I'm not talking about major/minor genes). As scientists are learning, the inhibition and activation of genes is alot more complicated than expected. With less genes, it means that the methods such as histone inhibition or non-genetic micro-RNA are more significant. Of course, it may also mean that DNA isn't the holy grail of biology, like we all thought (instead it is a complex interaction between micro-RNA and DNA).
According to scientists, we gained 1000 genes compared to rodents when we diverged from them 75 millions years ago. And we 'lost' 33 genes compared to them (they have a functional copy, we have a nonfunctional pseudogene; it's still there, only not working - stop codons, etc).
The "we must have more gene than (insert stupid animal or plant here)" is funny. Our superiority complex at its best.
Read about the whole thing (with more links) on my blog (see sig)
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
I was at a lecture by Evelyn Fox Keller, and she said that there has been a paradigm shift and we're moving from breaking up biology into tiny parts, to seeing the whole picture. Whether theres 100,000 or 20,000 genomes seems rather trivial.
Would not reducing the number of genes from 100,000 down to 25,000 reduce the number of possible interactions from (100,000!/2) to (25,000!/2)? Thats a factor of a number that has 357480 digits!
Well, technically, you CAN buy genes. There are quite a few companies that sell pre-sequenced genes. In fact, the entire genomes of several organisms are available in varying amounts ligated into Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes (BACs) and plasmids. An interesting link is http://www.arabidopsis.org/ - There's a lot of information on Arabidopsis, where they keep a database of the entire Arabidopsis genome as well as many freely-available tools for its analysis.
Note that even with "only" 20K genes, this still gives us nearly 400M subsets of 2 individual genes to ponder. The complexity of the human organism is not surprising. In fact, it would be surprising if it were not so complex.
http://neokosmos.blogsome.com
Humans are almost at the level of technology that we can design organisms. Why should it not have been possible for another intelligent race to design an organism (and we be its mutated offspring)? It seems improbable, but it may have occured. And we may find out that it may not have been by 'God' (or that it was or that it didn't occur).
My favorite theory was that it was both evolution and intelligent design. Consider an anthill. Each ant is as dumb as a rock. But in a social structure the ant colony is incredibly intelligent (gathers food, fights off foes, goes to war). I see no reason that the horde of organisms on earth couldn't have created a superintelligent collective that we don't see because we aren't looking for it. In this way, evolution occured because it was the will of the collective.
And if we were to consider the possiblity of up to every gene interacting with each other, that would give us 20000!, or roughly 1.819e+77337 possibilities. (surprisingly enough, that didn't crash the windows calculator program, although it did take a second or two even on an A64)
An often unknown fact is that a single gene can code for thousands of different proteins. Protein regulation can occur in a variety of way, one of which is through "junk" DNA.
Currently little is known on the exact mechanism, which is a huge impediment to proteomics. As the phenomenon is elucidated, expect to see a lot more useful information coming out of genome projects.
Computationally predicting the 3-D structure and function of a gene is far more important than you probably realize. Reaching this point will revolutionize almost every aspect of your life, from pharmaceuticals, to nutrition, to silico-neural interfaces.
DNA isn't the holy grail of biology, like we all thought (instead it is a complex interaction between micro-RNA and DNA).
Interesting. I'd go out on a limb and say it was the process of translation or even protein folding that is the actual holy grail.
There are some camps that believe that the DNA->mRNA interaction (aka transcription) is less complex and more predictable than the mRNA->Protein interaction (aka translation). If my memory serves me well, the process of transcription usually produces a fairly good "copy" of the DNA sequence, while translation seems to have a few unknowns in how he sequence is transformed into AA chains. And then the way in which the proteins fold, and hence gain their function is still up for grabs.
Sigh... I just never learn. I know these arguments are completely fruitless in my head, but I can never seem to convince my fingers of that fact... But anyway, as a creationist myself, I would like to comment on this post. Oh, and forgive my crappy spelling, I'm a CS major not an English major ;x
> 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."
First of all, I would like to point out that this post appears to have been posted in response to a nonexistant argument. I could be wrong, but I don't see anything in the above posts about this "proving" creationism. If I am mistaken, I apologize.
Secondly, no creationist with a brain will say anything similar to "OMG WE'RE SO COMPLEX THIS *PROVES* CREATION HAPPENED HAHAHA PWNED" This is because creationists and most intellegent evolutionists have both accepted one simple fact. As of right now, neither creation nor evolution is provable. Period. I personally believe that neither will ever be provable. I wasn't going to comment on this topic, but if I were to make a statement, I would say "This makes creationism even more -probable-."
> 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".
I disagree with this. The purpose of science is not to find out how things originated, but it is to understand things. To find out how things can be used or manipulated to better mankind. That's what this whole genome thing is about, am I right? Who gives a crap about how all these genes got to be as complex as they are. The only thing genome researchers are interested in is how these genes can be manipulated to wipe out diseases, prevent birth defects, etc. That's the real goal. Thus, saying "well God must have done it" doesn't mean anything. Whether or not God directly created the human genome has no effect on our mission to actually -understand- them.
> 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?
I find this most interesting. From the unexplainable gravitational force, to complex celluar structures, to the strict and perfect laws of physics... you see the beauty of it as well. Nature is indeed artistic masterpiece. Even though you view this masterpiece, this "Gaia", as having created itself, you too see nature as the beautiful mural that it is. You're just not willing to call the artist "God".
Eh, close enough =p
Essentially what they're saying is, mouse genomes contain large (millions of bases long) intervals which don't appear to do anything, and that there are no noticeable effects on the mouse if these sections of their genomes are removed. Which begs the BIG question, "What are those sections of the genome actually doing there?"
It is possible that they really do nothing , but such an "explanation" would be even more disturbing than finding that they do something which we don't understand yet.
Someone mentioned Greg Bear's "Darwin's Children" series of books, and I agree that Bear is a good writer. But his explanation of these oddities of genetics is equally unsatisfying too. Nice books though - and Bear does keep his finger on the pulse of the science.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Some people claim that there are other ways of knowing, such as mysticism or revelation. How can we verify these claims? People making them often don't even agree with each other.
The only way that I know to verify any mystic's abilities is for the supposed mystic to be able to accurately, repeatedly, and verifiably know things that are supposedly impossible to know - such as events of the future. I know of no one who can, or could.
Of course, we have to be very careful in any such testing of skills, because a good magician can easily fool us. Even if there were somebody who could predict the future, that does not mean that there's a god. It would only mean that this person has peculiar skills. I submit that mysticism and revelation result from internal, altered states of consciousness - with no basis in external reality.
Mysticism and revelation can only count for those who experience them; for all other people, they are merely hearsay. Thus, we can't depend on mysticism or religious revelation to give us the answers to any issues.
I have a real question. Exactly whose DNA was used to "decode the human genome"? Is it possible to use DNA from multiple people?
Moderation: +1 pwnage
J. Craig Venter himself, apparently.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. Albert Einstein
Gene count is a funny thing. Frogs, for example, have a lot of genes to guide their development from egg to tadpole to account for variations in water temperature and chemistry. Mammals gestate in a much more controlled environment (controlled temperature and chemistry), and hence do not need this huge complex of genes.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.