Comments on: The Human Genome at 10: What It Did—and Didn’t—Deliver

By: Vaccination Dalek

Vaccination Dalek — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:21:58 +0000

Having a complete list of all the proteins possible to be made in the human body seems pretty invaluable. I think the big thing holding us back is that exact protein structure is really hard to determine from the DNA sequence. Things have been getting better, and I have heard of things like high throughput x-ray crystallography are on the horizon, but without it, its like having the box of parts for a car without a picture of the finished product. Predictions can and are being made, but since drug research typically requires exact structures to look for potential effector molecules, the genome sequences aren’t the magic bullet for figuring out stuff in the computer just yet. There is a lot more to be learned before the genome can be transformed into a living organism on a computer, but its a big first step, and its now public and free.

That being said, I’m pretty sure all medical and biological sciences benefit from the HGP. I use NCBI’s alignment programs all the time, for free. How can you identify mutants if you don’t know what the original should look like? In many ways, I think the HGP was more valuable than the moon mission or other such prestige undertakings, since it informs every facet of biological sciences.

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 23:43:25 +0000

Let’s face facts. The diseases with simple genetic causes, I believe these are referred to as SNP’s, were already mostly understood long before the detailed genetic data came in. Sure, medicine may not have known what the exact “normal” and exact “abnormal” sequences were, but doing the Mendeleevian inheritence maps zero in on these fairly quickly. Once you have appropriate expertise and the right data set available.

Mostly, what is left are the complex diseases. Ones with multiple genetic loci, or ones with intertwined genetic and environmental causes.

If anything I am more confident and optimistic than @1 nick is. The real question will be, once we start gaining deep understanding of our DNA, will we use the knowledge wisely?

By: nick

nick — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 01:45:31 +0000

We can never have enough data. We may not know what to do with it yet, but it is all valuable. Even data with no apparent value still has value in knowing that it’s valueless, and should be kept as example so the territory isn’t re-covered.

But knowing how computers work intimately separates the professional programmers from the amateurs.

And how long was physics around before Einstein’s relativity and theories shook the world? There *must* be value in DNA study, because it literally dictates everything about how we should be built and operate, hardware wise. It’s like saying the blueprints to a building don’t have value because you can’t read them properly.

Only time will tell, this is true, but time has told again and again, the more information we have the better we are able to cope with things – we just can’t predict in what ways beforehand.

It took hundreds of millions of years to write this code, mind you, and 50 years to unlock since the discovery of DNA, we shouldn’t be surprised at all that great things haven’t happened yet. Come back to me when the human genome is 50. :)