OTOH neither company is unaware that they live in a country which:
1) Does not have a national ID card for privacy reasons
The SSN is a national ID routinely used by private industry. The state drivers license is a nearly national ID and is tied to the SSN. The credit report most people have is used an ID. People are required to provide name, address and perhaps a few other bits of info so their identity can be verified and the answers to many other nosy questions can be revealed.
2) Does not have centralized health documentation primarily for privacy reasons
The Medical Information Bureau is a centralized source of health records containing records in more than 15 million US + CAN people:
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs8-med.htm
This article sounds like it was written from proteomics company press releases. With the human genome sequenced, companies are trying to push interest in proteomics, large scale projects to study the proteins encoded by the human genes.
They have an interest in down playing the usefulness of the sequence of the 30,000 human genes, and promoting the mystery and necessity of studying
the proteins generated from the genes in all their
variants.
And so this distorted 'news' story, with the many errors of fact and emphasis that others have remarked on, gets written. There is utility in studying the protein variants of genes, but it is a maginal utility. The '300,000' variants is a number out of a hat, the true number may differ by an order of magnitude. And many protein variants don't affect gene function...:)
Again, this is true...but don't forget that "recombining already existing technologies" can be pretty powerful and useful all by itself. (Heck, "recombining existing technologies" is, basically, a fundamental design principle of
Unix-based systems, isn't it? I know MY Unix-based systems are extremely useful... I love my "|" key...)
The analogy doesn't hold well. The tools of biotech are very crude, like chopping away with bronze axes. It's not possible to modify organisms by mixing and matching the parts we understand in UNIX-style. Only a few genes can be modified in an organism, easily in bacteria and yeast, with difficulty in rodents and domestic animals, and hardly at all in humans.
A better analogy for the current state of biotech would be we can see the source code (by sequencing), we only understand a bit of the language (sometimes we can't tell the comments from the code, like obfuscated C), and we have the technology to cut-and-paste a statement or two within and between programs (recombinant DNA technology).
Get influence the old-fashioned way, buy a politician. Local politicians sell for a few hundred, state pols for thousands, and federal officials for 10^5 dollars. It's legal, it's the American way.
Pols will expect payments every election cycle, and you should be able to step-up if they run for higher office. Buy one yourself or start a polical action committee (PAC) with a few like-minded people and pool your resources. Your payments buy you access to your politician when you want to discuss your issue, and your pol might even introduce the bill you write.
Of course, your pol will require attention. Don't buy a pol if you don't (a PAC helps reduce your commitment) have the time to monitor, lobby, feed, and disipline it. Think of it like buying a dog...
This is a large topic (it generally takes 2-3 years to teach people the basics), and from there specialities head off in countless directions (your question is large in a similar manner to 'I want to learn about computers':>).
To understand genetic engineering you need to understand the technology and also the organism on which it is being used. A fair grounding in general biology, the model organisms used to develop the technology, the basics of molecular biology, some genetics and cell biology is needed. Most genetic engineering is developed by finding out how some portion of biology works, and then imitating it for human purposes. Genetic engineering is like copying source code--scientists study the organism (the original code), and then crudely copy it giving a new genetic engineering technology.
These links can give you a start, but if you are seriously interested, pick up an introductory college text with molecular biology, cell biology, or genetics in the title.
This follows in straightforward fashion from previous work. The complete genomic sequence of 64 microbes has been determined, all in the past half dozen years. The sequenced microbes typically have between 500 and a 5,000 genes ( Lyme disease spirochaete, Borrelia burgdorferi Mycoplasma genitaliumb acterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae). Several of the smallest genomes are around 500 genes, showing that this number is the minimum needed for a microbe. It turns out that these microbes don't have the same set of 500 genes. Each orgamism has the 'core' genes needed to stay alive, plus a some organism specific genes, those needed to survive in its particular environment. By looking for the smallest common set, the 'core' set of genes to create a living organism can be found (a bit difficult, since the function of some of these genes is not known, and two with no obvious similarity may perform the same function in different organisms). This seems to be what has been done, it was an obvious next step in studying these genomes.
It may be possible to engineer an organism with this 'core' set of genes, to see if it is correct, and to work iteratively to a confirmed 'core' set of genes. I wouldn't call this 'creating' life, it's really modifying an existing organism, similar to what is done regularly by molecular biologists, but with a new goal. It will help understanding of existing organisms, but isn't anywhere close to making a 'new' form of life.
The huge processor time needed to assemble the Calera sequence is Calera's problem. It comes about because of how the Co. decided to sequence, by cutting all the human DNA (3e9 base pairs, or bps) into tiny bits and sequencing ~500-1000 bps of each bit. Calera owns all this sequence, and no doubt has the computing resources to do at least a poor assembly of the mass of sequence data they'll generate. A more sensible approach to sequencing is being used by the Human Genome Project. DNA clones 10e5 bps in size are cut in small bits and 500-1000 bps are sequenced from each piece. Thus the assembly is of a 10e5 bp clone. Overlapping clones are sequenced to generate larger segments of sequence. Calera is skimming the human genome. They'll generate a bunch of raw sequence, assemble what they can, patent everything that looks appealing, and then with 40-70% done, declare the sequencing complete, and close up shop. The Human Genome Project will be years finishing things up. Jim Lund
Slashdot Mirror
1) Does not have a national ID card for privacy reasons
The SSN is a national ID routinely used by private industry. The state drivers license is a nearly national ID and is tied to the SSN. The credit report most people have is used an ID. People are required to provide name, address and perhaps a few other bits of info so their identity can be verified and the answers to many other nosy questions can be revealed.
2) Does not have centralized health documentation primarily for privacy reasons
The Medical Information Bureau is a centralized source of health records containing records in more than 15 million US + CAN people: http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs8-med.htm
They have an interest in down playing the usefulness of the sequence of the 30,000 human genes, and promoting the mystery and necessity of studying the proteins generated from the genes in all their variants.
And so this distorted 'news' story, with the many errors of fact and emphasis that others have remarked on, gets written. There is utility in studying the protein variants of genes, but it is a maginal utility. The '300,000' variants is a number out of a hat, the true number may differ by an order of magnitude. And many protein variants don't affect gene function... :)
Jim Lund
jiml@stanford.edu
The analogy doesn't hold well. The tools of biotech are very crude, like chopping away with bronze axes. It's not possible to modify organisms by mixing and matching the parts we understand in UNIX-style. Only a few genes can be modified in an organism, easily in bacteria and yeast, with difficulty in rodents and domestic animals, and hardly at all in humans.
A better analogy for the current state of biotech would be we can see the source code (by sequencing), we only understand a bit of the language (sometimes we can't tell the comments from the code, like obfuscated C), and we have the technology to cut-and-paste a statement or two within and between programs (recombinant DNA technology).
Jim Lund jiml@stanford.edu
Pols will expect payments every election cycle, and you should be able to step-up if they run for higher office. Buy one yourself or start a polical action committee (PAC) with a few like-minded people and pool your resources. Your payments buy you access to your politician when you want to discuss your issue, and your pol might even introduce the bill you write.
Of course, your pol will require attention. Don't buy a pol if you don't (a PAC helps reduce your commitment) have the time to monitor, lobby, feed, and disipline it. Think of it like buying a dog...
To understand genetic engineering you need to understand the technology and also the organism on which it is being used. A fair grounding in general biology, the model organisms used to develop the technology, the basics of molecular biology, some genetics and cell biology is needed. Most genetic engineering is developed by finding out how some portion of biology works, and then imitating it for human purposes. Genetic engineering is like copying source code--scientists study the organism (the original code), and then crudely copy it giving a new genetic engineering technology.
These links can give you a start, but if you are seriously interested, pick up an introductory college text with molecular biology, cell biology, or genetics in the title.
Here are some resources available on the web:
Primer on Molecular Genetics (Department of Energy)
MIT Biology Hypertextbook
Primer on Molecular Genetics from the U.S. Department of Energy
Biotech Applied follow the Biotech Applied and Biotech Chronicles links
(Small) glossary of genetic terms put together by the National Human Genome Research Institute
Info on research (with great graphics) funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Jim Lund
It may be possible to engineer an organism with this 'core' set of genes, to see if it is correct, and to work iteratively to a confirmed 'core' set of genes. I wouldn't call this 'creating' life, it's really modifying an existing organism, similar to what is done regularly by molecular biologists, but with a new goal. It will help understanding of existing organisms, but isn't anywhere close to making a 'new' form of life.
Jim Lund
The huge processor time needed to assemble the Calera sequence is Calera's problem. It comes about because of how the Co. decided to sequence, by cutting all the human DNA (3e9 base pairs, or bps) into tiny bits and sequencing ~500-1000 bps of each bit. Calera owns all this sequence, and no doubt has the computing resources to do at least a poor assembly of the mass of sequence data they'll generate. A more sensible approach to sequencing is being used by the Human Genome Project. DNA clones 10e5 bps in size are cut in small bits and 500-1000 bps are sequenced from each piece. Thus the assembly is of a 10e5 bp clone. Overlapping clones are sequenced to generate larger segments of sequence. Calera is skimming the human genome. They'll generate a bunch of raw sequence, assemble what they can, patent everything that looks appealing, and then with 40-70% done, declare the sequencing complete, and close up shop. The Human Genome Project will be years finishing things up. Jim Lund