Being this the first post on this blog, I decided to start with this article from Nature magazine since I consider it analogous to what I will try to do this year with this blog. I don't think fifty years ago, as a young student, Watson thought he would be able to have his entire genome decoded and saved on a small DVD. Similarly when I was in high school, it never crossed my mind that information would travel so fast and be so accessible to the public like it does with the help of the internet. As a high school teacher many times I see how students miss the importance of this or at least don't realize how fortunate they are to be living in the information era. Just like Watson's (and Crick's) work gave way to some powerful tools today, I hope my students (or any other) will use this site as a tool to keep up-to-date with current discoveries and research made throughout the world.
Nobel laureate James D. Watson peered deep into his genome yesterday. And soon, anyone else interested in his genetic makeup will be able to do the same.
Scientists in Houston presented Watson with a DVD of his genome sequence, which they said was the "first individual genome to be sequenced for less than $1 million". The carefully worded claim may be an acknowledgement that another personal genome project has already been completed: J. Craig Venter has deposited his genome sequence into the public GenBank database, he told Nature two weeks ago.
Such personal genomes are for now largely symbolic, because it's difficult to draw concrete information about a person's health from his or her genome sequence. more
Scientists in Houston presented Watson with a DVD of his genome sequence, which they said was the "first individual genome to be sequenced for less than $1 million". The carefully worded claim may be an acknowledgement that another personal genome project has already been completed: J. Craig Venter has deposited his genome sequence into the public GenBank database, he told Nature two weeks ago.
Such personal genomes are for now largely symbolic, because it's difficult to draw concrete information about a person's health from his or her genome sequence. more
Source: Nature
4 comments:
Interesting, I wouldn't think that such an intelligent, revolutionary scientist would choose to remain purposefully ignorant of his own future. I, personally, would want to know ahead of time.
Do you know that the person that wrote the book that Spielberg based the movie JAWS on is now writing another one that advocates for the protection of sharks in general? He realized how much damage the book (well, actually the movie) caused to the image of sharks around the world, and now he's trying to "fix" that problem. Maybe Watson is afraid of something similar happening after describing the DNA molecule, and being aware of all that has been done 50 after that.
Well, he already wrote the book.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/06/0606_shark5.html
This is great info to know.
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