Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The One Thousand Genes You Could Live Without

Posted by samzenpus on from the stuff-you-don't-need dept.

sciencehabit writes Today researchers unveiled the largest ever set of full genomes from a single population: Iceland. The massive project, carried out by a private company in the country, deCODE genetics, has yielded new disease risk genes, insights into human evolution, and a list of more than 1000 genes that people can apparently live without. The project also serves as a model for other countries' efforts to sequence their people's DNA for research on personalized medical care, says study leader Kári Stefánsson, deCODE's CEO. For example, the United States is planning to sequence the genomes of 1 million Americans over the next few years and use the data to devise individualized treatments.

22 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Absence of evidence... by mikaere · · Score: 5, Insightful

    is not evidence of absence. I'll be keeping mine, thanks.

    --
    It's good luck to be superstitious
    1. Re:Absence of evidence... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Presumably you can live without them because there are people who live without them and are fine for it.

    2. Re:Absence of evidence... by RoknrolZombie · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yes, but other people are are largely stupid and completely insane.

    3. Re:Absence of evidence... by rogoshen1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yar, something as complex and time-tested as the human genome can surely be understood and manipulated by us with no unforeseen consequences.

    4. Re:Absence of evidence... by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      DNA is a complex language that we are barely beginning to understand. Unlike CRISPr, this kind of thing actually is "hacking the genome" in a clueless fashion. I think this is an area where clearly some corrolary of the Hypocratic Oath should be in effect.

      If it's not broken, then don't try to fix it. Leave it alone. The best thing to do (barring any indications to the contrary) is nothing.

      I suspect that we are still at the "don't know how much we don't know" stage of genetics at this point.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  2. Keyword "apparently" by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They said the same thing about "junk" DNA. 10-15 years from now, it may no longer be apparent that you can do without them.

    --
    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    1. Re:Keyword "apparently" by Cyberax · · Score: 4, Informative

      Most of the junk DNA is still... junk. Basically it's:

      1) 60% of the DNA is _definitely_ junk, as they consist of known repeated elements (LINEs, SINEs and others) and defunct genes. This is not an 'absence of evidence', we know exactly how this DNA has happened.

      2) Around 10% of DNA is structural. While this is technically not 'junk', this DNA does not encode anything useful.

      3) Around 5% are coding sections and regulatory elements.

      4) Another 5% of DNA appear to be stable under mutation pressure. So it might have some function.

      4) And finally we have around 20% of DNA whose purpose is not known, but we know that random mutations in it do not visibly affect the phenotype.

  3. Re:The thousand genes we don't know if are needed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    RTFA... they found people with double deletions.

  4. Re:The thousand genes we don't know if are needed. by complete+loony · · Score: 2

    I believe they mean that they have identified people who are living without those genes.

    --
    09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
  5. Boo, you fad killer! by s.petry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Today's fad is to try and come up with the "perfect" human. Always happy, 200 IQ, and the personality of a turnip as to not be offensive to anyone at any time. Of course they must be orange skinned, no hair, and no gender features (I hope you saw the South Park episode) because if anything visible marked one of them as "different" the project would be a failure. Perfect is quoted, because this perfection is severely subjective and the person who's ideal you are going to meet probably does not match your own.

    As you point out, there is no way to know what these apparently unused genes do until we start making modifications. These are pretty dangerous times we live in for many reasons. People believing they are smarter than billions of years of evolution gives me no assurance that these people have a clue, let alone care about modifying people.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    1. Re:Boo, you fad killer! by turbidostato · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "there is no way to know what these apparently unused genes do until we start making modifications."

      No way? sure?

      What if, for instance, you find a person that simply lacks a gene and still is perfectly functional?

      Now, go read the article.

    2. Re:Boo, you fad killer! by Nemyst · · Score: 4, Interesting

      People believing they are smarter than billions of years of evolution gives me no assurance that these people have a clue, let alone care about modifying people.

      Putting evolution on a pedestal isn't much smarter. It's not some godlike entity which designed humans with a goal in mind, it's a very long, very sinuous process which often gives locally optimal but globally suboptimal results. There is no reason to think that humans, for some reason, can't do better.

    3. Re:Boo, you fad killer! by dbarclay10 · · Score: 2

      What if, for instance, you find that that "perfectly functional" person has a rare modification to another gene that allows them to get by without the missing gene?

      What if, for instance, that gene is only required when you've been exposed to some common element or set of circumstances that the "perfectly functional" person just happened to avoid, by chance?

      What if, for instance, that "perfectly functional" individual isn't, in fact, perfectly functional? What if, for instance, any complications simply haven't yet become apparent?

      The headlines and any articles that say we could do without a given gene are almost certainly sensational. I will give the benefit of the doubt and assume the original paper doesn't make any such ridiculous claims.

      --

      Barclay family motto:
      Aut agere aut mori.
      (Either action or death.)
  6. Re:The thousand genes we don't know if are needed. by Alomex · · Score: 4, Funny

    This explains republicans....

    (ducks)

  7. viral rootkit by goombah99 · · Score: 4, Funny

    careful my dear replicant, those are kernel extensions injected into your DNA by the Sony reverse transciptase root kit. Evidently you are a replicant. Look for the Sony Copyright and your model number to see if you have a null pre-programmed life expectancy.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  8. Re:The thousand genes we don't know if are needed. by Chikungunya · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Any of those genes could encode a protein whose function can be done by another protein that other people may or not express. Obviously the people identified did not need "that" specific protein to do its work but it may be completely possible that a majority of people do not have the compensating gene.

    Until experimentation is done to evaluate the need of those genes you can say that those "may" not be indispensable, but saying that apparently they are not needed is too strong a conclusion for the work done.

  9. floppy disk by goombah99 · · Score: 2

    What I find staggering to comprehend is that your genome will easily fit on a CD. Even if you allow for all the midochondrial DNA, and epigenetic information it still would fit on a CD. If not all of it's needed maybe there's a Damn Small Linux version of your DNA that would fit on a floppy.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:floppy disk by Rei · · Score: 2

      Where do you get that? Wikipedia says that the human genome is 3,23473 billion base pairs. I mean, you could compress that to fit on a CD, but it won't fit at one byte per BP. Won't even fit at 2 bits per BP.

      And if we want to think of a BP like a letter in a piece of code, with an average programming code line length of say 15 non-whitespace characters, that corresponds to a program 216 million lines long. That'd be no little program...

      Of course, only a tiny fraction of our DNA codes for what we would consider to be the "interesting stuff".

      --
      "99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
  10. Re:$1000 for a genome? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Last time I checked (about 6 months ago), MacroGen up in Korea will do a whole genome (30X coverage) for $1,500 - but the minimum order is 50 genomes. If you only want one genome sequenced then the cost is $4,500.

    It's worth noting also that you don't need blood, per se. DNAGenotek sells saliva collection kits ($20/kit but 25 kit minimum order). Basically you just spit in a tube, FedEx it to Korea and a few months later they're send you a USB external hard drive with a few hundred GB of your genome sequence data.

    And this is all for Illumina short reads (e.g. 200 base pairs) - so you won't get good mapping to much of the reference genome - e.g. if you're looking for a microdeletion in a repetitive region you may be out of luck. PacBio technology offers longer reads (e.g. 10,000 base pairs) but then even just 1X coverage whole genome sequencing will cost you about $8,000.

  11. It's the comments by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

    Don't delete anything, comment it out! You never know, you might need to put it back.

    https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/...

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  12. Re:I'm keeping my genes! by Bengie · · Score: 2

    There are fully healthy XX males. Not too common, but there are cases where nearly all of the genes from the Y have been transcribed to the X. We have yet to have found a fertile XX male, but it's only because they lack the gene to allow sperm to swim. Move that gene over and we're good to go. Then everyone could be XX.

  13. Math by goombah99 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    3 billion base pairs.

    Each base pair is 2 bits (AGC or T). A byte is 8 bits or 4 base pairs. so

    3E9 / 4 = 750 MegaBytes.

    A CD holds up to 900MB of data. No need to even compress the data, and it would be highly(!) compressible

    Q.E.D.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.