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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.

15 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.

  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. 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.

  5. Re:The thousand genes we don't know if are needed. by Alomex · · Score: 4, Funny

    This explains republicans....

    (ducks)

  6. 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.
  7. 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.

  8. 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."
  9. 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.