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Genome of DNA Pioneer Is Deciphered
unchiujar writes "The New York Times reports that the full genome of James D. Watson, one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953, has been deciphered, marking what some scientists believe is the gateway to an impending era of personalized genomic medicine. A copy of his genome, recorded on a pair of DVDs, was presented to Dr. Watson on Thursday in a ceremony in Houston by Richard Gibbs, director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at the Baylor College of Medicine, and by Jonathan Rothberg, founder of the company 454 Life Sciences. 'The first two genome sequences belonging to individuals are now being made available to researchers within a few days of each other. One is Dr. Watson's and the other belongs to J. Craig Venter, who as president of the Celera Corporation started a human genome project in competition with the government. Dr. Venter left Celera after producing only a draft version of a genome, his own, in 2001, which the company did no further work on. He has now brought his genome to completion at his own institute in Rockville, Md., and deposited it last week in GenBank, a public DNA database, he said.'"
For the curious, read a pretty good synopsis of Dr. Watson here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson#Contr oversy_about_using_King.27s_College_London.27s_res ults, and if you are extremely interested, pick up a copy of "The Double Helix." It is really strange, but even his autobiography makes him sound like a total ass, and includes an apology of sorts in the revised version, which is commendable.
In short, Watson stole a lot of data, and the structure of DNA would have been determined in less than a couple months by the more deserving Linus Pauling, who has conducted himself in a much more dignified fashion. It is really strange how superficial history records events, with the "first" often the most noisy, obnoxious scientist / engineer / artist, and not the industrious, studious type.
Well, perhaps they will find some genes responsible for the "jerk" phenotype... (at work, have to post AC).
It's not a torrent, but you can in fact download the complete sequence and traces.
Yes, the man was part of a team that made a huge scientific breakthrough. If someone wants to argue that that makes him a genius, well, I won't start an argument on that front. But there's no doubt that Watson was (and still is) also of poor character.
He and his colleagues knowingly stole vital DNA X-ray diffraction data from Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling without their knowledge and consent (indeed, Franklin had even refused to share it), which tarnishes their acheivements.
More recently, he has called for genetic screenings before birth to weed out "really stupid" people (the bottom 10 percent or so), and he has a nice line in how to deal with homosexuality, too. He believes "that if the gene [for homosexuality] were discovered and a woman decided not to give birth to a child that may have a tendency to become homosexual, she should be able to abort the fetus." Not to put too fine a point on it, but that strikes me as being rather too close to Third Reich thinking for my liking.
He might have performed some fantastic science but, to me, his words preclude him from being considered a great scientist. Certainly they show that he's not a great human being.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
No. Sorry, you've got me wrong here, friend. It's not a case of "anything that looks like what the Nazis did is bad", it's a case of what he said isbad.
Abortions because of a likelyhood of low IQ or homosexuality? That doesn't abhor you? I'm all for a woman's right to choose not to have a baby (it's her body, it's her choice) but to make that choice available on the basis of likely intelligence or sexuality (or hair colour, or skin tone) is, to me and most people, a step too far.
OK, if a foetus is going to result in a severe genetic abnormality (such as a severe mental or physical disability) then I can see why the option of an abortion should be made available but that's a whole different kettle of fish.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I'm doing undergrad biochem and we've done this math several times, as has been mentioned here in other threads, 1GB is the ballpark amount of space a single UNCOMPRESSED human genome should take up.
On one hand, this is a marginal underestimate because there are more than 4 DNA nucleobases (quite rare, but they exist and need to be recorded if you're profiling a genome).
However, the genome should be quite happily compressable (think bz2 or some specialized lossless form of compression) due to MANY repeating sequences and the fact that most exons (that you'd normally use 6 bits to describe) can be described using 5 bits by pinpointing their product on an amino-acid table (numbering 20 members most of the time), or even 4 bits if you narrow that table from the 20-most-common to the 15-most-common and use the 16th position to describe less-common sequences using more bits, just to name a few reasons.
Maybe a bit of added data they put in describes things we've learned about the data which wasn't physically present in the original DNA such as "here ends intron, here starts exon, here be boundary" etc.
In short, it should be highly compressible and fit in way under 2 DVD's, so for the life of me I can't figure out what they plugged onto two DVDs. Software to decipher it? Gene database correlating what's in your personal genome to what the genes are known to do? Free BonziBuddy extra content? Bonus "behind the scenes" material?
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considering that the reason species propagate is a sexual attraction to the opposite sex, instilled by biology and thus DNA, it is not a wide leap at all to consider that sometimes the DNA would have a different effect. Like people who have two eyes that are different colors.
-Clio
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