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Hunting Disease Origins By Whole-Genome Sequencing
ChocSnorfler writes "James Lupski, a physician-scientist who suffers from a neurological disorder called Charcot-Marie-Tooth, has been searching for the genetic cause of his disease for more than 25 years. Late last year, he finally found it — by sequencing his entire genome. While a number of human genome sequences have been published to date, Lupski's research is the first to show how whole-genome sequencing can be used to identify the genetic cause of an individual's disease."
Your genome has a lot of differences from the reference genome. They narrowed down the differences based on a lot of previous work discovering genes linked to the disorder.
Only then were they able to zero in on precisely what gene in his specific genome caused the problem, and confirm it by testing other family members.
I can't believe this got modded insightful. Even without the racist insinuations, it's just plain wrong.
First, evolution does not have a purpose, and we surely don't have a "duty of doing our part in evolution". Evolution is just a natural process. Saying we have a duty to evolution makes about as much sense as saying we should stop building airplanes because we're neglecting our duty to gravity.
Second, the idea that we need to "weed out" the undesired traits in the human species is wrong because evolution does not work that way. Major changes in the genome generally happen within small, isolated populations. With such a huge population as humans on Earth is, evolution will be an extremely slow process. The gene pool will be mixed and mingled and these undesired traits will come and go.
Third, it's not clear what would represent "good" and "bad" traits (let alone genes) in humans. For example, people suffering from sickle-cell disease are more resistant to malaria. It would also be extremly difficult and costly to determine which genes are good and which are bad. Evolution, on the other hand, doesn't care. It only cares about if the genes are good enough to let the individual survive and reproduce. For this reason, eugenics is generally considered a pseudoscience.
Fourth, and I really shouldn't have to mention this, no one in their sane mind wants a government that gets to decide who can reproduce and who can't. If you don't see why this is a bad idea, then maybe YOU should refrain from breeding because we surely don't want anyone who lacks imagination to reproduce, right?