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Breakthrough In Human Genetics
Many readers have submitted this story about a breakthrough in our understanding of human DNA: in particular, how much variation can exist between peoples' genes and how genes are involved with certain diseases. "One person's DNA code can be as much as 10 percent different from another's, researchers said on Wednesday in a finding that questions the idea that everyone on Earth is 99.9 percent identical genetically.
They said their new version of the human genetic map, or 'book of life,' fills in many missing pages and chapters to explain how genes are involved in common diseases.
The Human Genome Project mapped the billions of letters that make up the human genetic code. Scientists later refined the map by looking for single variations called SNPs or single nucleotide polymorphisms.
The CNV map gives researchers a different way to look for genes linked to diseases by identifying gains, losses, and alterations in the genome."
Humm, do I detect a faint case of the pot calling the kettle black here?
Seriously, far more of my spelling mistakes are uncorrected typo's and until I got the touchpad on this lappy turned off tonight, from miss-fires of that POS.
To get back on topic, I think as their mapping techniques improve, they are going to find a hell of a lot more than todays quoted 12-15% differences. Many of those will be indicators of a disease, or a precursor marker for one. However, it still scares me that there will inevitably be those who would take upon themselves to improve on man by selectively erasing those genes known to be deleterious. Thats playing God, and God has had many tens of millions of years to both record history in these genes and to figure out what works over time scales these Johnny come lately's cannot begin to appreciate. For instance, fixing the sickle-cell problem in blacks: That gives an immunity to malaria that I as a caucasian don't have, and its entirely possible that if the sickle-cell problem was fixed, and 300 years elapsed so that the majority of the blacks were of the fixed lineage, then along comes a new variety of malaria, wipeing out 99% of them in one swell foop.
Lets not allow them to go down that slippery slope, I do not see it as being good for "man" over geological time spans. And I hope that we do not invent something that winds up sterilizing this puny little planet, but there are those who would gleefully do it. And we *think* we know who they are. But as Pogo said, we have met the enemy, and he IS us...
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Cheers, Gene