Slashdot Mirror
The Race To $1,000 Human Genome Sequencing
ericjones12398 writes "Just one decade ago, sequencing an entire human genome cost upwards of $10 million and took about three years to complete. Now, several companies are racing to provide technology that can sequence a complete human genome in one day for less than $1,000. 'A genome sequence for $1,000 was a pipe dream, just a few years ago,' said Dr. Richard Gibbs, director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine, 'A $1,000 genome in less than one day was not even on the radar, but will transform the clinical applications of sequencing."
Evolution is simply the description of the effect of the environment on species over time. Change the environment (e.g. introduce civilization) and evolution continues, it's just responding to different pressures.
Evolution ? Of humans ? Since the beginning of medicine, since we save the weak and the sick, evolution is not a natural process anymore, but something we control ourselves as a civilization.
Oh it's evolution all right. "Natural" or not, it's the same thing. We're selecting for traits that are advantageous at the point in time the selection occurs. In the case of the 'weak' or 'frail' we are making a conscious selection to keep these folks around for whatever reason. In the long run, it may help or hurt if the selection pressure on humans changes. Perhaps allowing kids who were born premature, who would not have survived except for the intervention of modern medicine, to survive and breed will pass along some genes that allow for their kids to survive in a high CO2 environment (or what ever). You don't know. Any time you select genes you're evolving.
Remember, evolution doesn't move in any particular 'direction'. Newer isn't better, just more adapt to the local environment. Change the environment, change the needed adaption and life goes on.
Nature cares not.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Not sure how accurate it is but the rudimentary DNA testing National Geographic does appears to be quite good at spotting basic ethnicity, especially Ashkenazi Jews, and they do something far less than full sequencing.
My family tree includes a Cherokee Indian and it come up with a pretty big blank on that one, but there probably isn't a very big sampling base for that while there probably is a big sampling base for Ashkenazi.
Even if its not entirely precise it will almost certainly be more precise than measuring facial features, or relying on genealogy like the Nazi's did.
One thing is a certainty that whatever race the next master race picks, the party leadership should probably get their own DNA sequenced first to make sure they are a member. It was fairly common for aspiring Nazi's to discover they had Jewish blood in their family trees.
P.S. If you do get your DNA sequenced, also remember you are making a decision for all of your relatives and descendents to expose their genetic history too.
@de_machina
"Not to mention the next time a nationalist socialist regime takes power they will have a really easy time identifying the people they want to put in the concentration camps."
We don't need a DNA profile, you cretin.
We have already pre-sorted them and deposited them into
government housing projects. We also know where they live, because that
information is linked to the receipt of welfare checks. Computers
and databases will make it easy this time, just as in the 1930s.
With the introduction of next-generation sequencing, the costs have actually dropped much faster than you'd predict if it followed Moore's Law. If it's possible to keep that pace up, then we can expect a $1000 genome in 2014-2015, and a $100 dollar genome two or three years later. My guess is that within 10-20 years we could see the widespread use of genetic screening of embryos for genetic diseases. Right now, this all seems very sci-fi. Like something out of Brave New World, Gattaca, or the Eugenics Wars in Star Trek. But unlike a lot of sci-fi, this stuff isn't fictional because it's technologically difficult/impossible, like a faster than light drive, or a flying car. It's sci-fi because it's too expensive to do right now, but that's going to change rapidly within our lifetimes. The development of tests for Down's Syndrome has already led to a dramatic reduction in the number of children born with the condition, it only follows that the development of new tests will have similar effects with other disorders.
This raises a lot of very thorny questions. Say a fetus tests positive for a mutation that is strongly associated with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. What's the moral choice? Is it moral to abort the fetus and spare them and their loved ones the suffering of Alzheimer's? Or would having that life be better than never being born at all? Or would you be willing to take the bet that in the next 30 to 60 years, they develop the therapies to cure or prevent the disease?
It gets more complicated. What if the fetus tested positive for a gene associated with schizophrenia? It might seem cruel to bring someone into the world knowing that's what they had to face. But this is where the story of genetic determinism put forward by modern medicine breaks down. Schizophrenia has a genetic component, true. What's remarkable is that among identical twins (100% shared DNA) the disease is found in both twins less than 50% of the time. Clearly, there's a very strong environmental component (another striking thing that backs this up is that schizophrenia rates are significantly higher in developed countries than in developing countries). Getting these genes makes you vulnerable, true, but there's a better-than-even chance you won't develop the disease at all. Is a less than 50% chance of developing schizophrenia enough to abort a fetus over?
The issues raised by gene sequencing have been pretty hypothetical up until now. It was too expensive and difficult to look at what genetic cards you'd been dealt. But that's going to change.
It's worth pointing out that it's not just human genomes which will be cheap. I'm excited about the applications this has in biology at large. If sequencing costs continue dropping at anything like their current rate of decrease, whole genome sequencing will soon be opened up to all sorts of interested parties. That has huge implications for taxonomy and phylogenetics, conservation, crop breeding and plant science as a whole.
If genome sequencing costs drop, that means other types of sequencing costs drop too. For example RNA-Seq, which lets us see which genes are currently active at a given point in time, in a sample from an organism. Things which are currently conceptually possible but prohibitively expensive, such as comparing the active genes across hundreds or thousands or species in a particular state, or across a species in hundreds of different environmental conditions, will become possible. Our understanding of life processes will deepen by an order of magnitude, with inevitable benefits in biotech, medicine and agriculture.
Nazis don't care about the genetics. They care about scapegoating people powerless to fight back. And then using their example to terrorize each and any other group they construct as the next target. None are spared.
BTW "nationalist socialist" countries are everywhere. The US has always offered "socialism" (government enforced wealth redistribution) mainly to its richest, and is about the most nationalist country behind N Korea. The UK, Norway, Switzerland and many other European countries are pretty socialist, though more equitable in the wealth redistribution source/destination, and are so nationalist they refuse to join the EU. Japan is pretty nationalist, and more socialist than the US.
If you're going to scare people with "nazi", just say "nazi". Stop trying to scare people about socialism, as if the Nazi socialism was representative of socialism any more than East Germany's "People's Republic" represented its people. Nazism was founded on propaganda, and sympathetic propaganda outlets continue to peddle its slanders today.
--
make install -not war
That argument is nonsense. It is a standard talking point by the people waging this class warfare thing on the side of the rich.
Nearly everyone who works in this country pays payroll taxes which range from 10-12.5% since Regean jacked them in the 80's. Payroll taxes alone are nearly as high a percentage as the 15% rich people pay on capital gains.
Then there is sales tax, the lower classes spend most of their money, while the rich invest most of theirs so the poor once again pay a disproportionate burden of these which is why its called a regressive tax. The rich want even more sales taxes (aka Value Added Taxes(VAT's) because they regressively punish people who spend and give the rich a free pass
Payroll taxes used to be a couple percent before Reagan jacked them. Social security in particular started producing huge surpluses then that were used to fund Federal budget deficits for decades, in Reagans case to squander money on weapons that were never used. The so called "Trust fund" was completely squandered. To pay for social security and medicare now we either have to tax people some more, borrow it or slash benefits.
Most seniors who retired in before the 90's put almost nothing in to SS and Medicare and are getting windfall returns. People who started working in or after the 80's have been paying taxes through the nose for programs that will be bankrupt and probably gone by the time they retire. It has become a massively regressive tax on young working people to support often affluent seniors.
@de_machina