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- Sweet Confusion: Does high fructose corn syrup deserve such a bad rap?
- Closed Thinking: Without scientific competition and open debate, much psychology research goes nowhere
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- Major twister hits Oklahoma: Its speed, which largely determines the damage it causes, is still unknown
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Web edition: December 30, 2010
Print edition: January 15, 2011; Vol.179 #2 (p. 30)
Genetics isn’t just a dry, academic pursuit — it’s getting personal. In Here is a Human Being, Angrist, a geneticist, introduces people who have already started living in what he calls the DNA Age. They include Angrist himself, who is one of 10 volunteers in a Harvard project that will publicly post participants’ DNA blueprints online along with personal information such as medical records, personality traits and pictures.
The title suggests an exploration of Angrist’s genome, but in fact, the book is just as much about the pioneers of personal genomics. Angrist covers the rise and decline of genetic-testing companies and the technology that makes knowing your own genetic makeup possible. He also explores the privacy concerns and other ethical questions that arise whenever DNA comes into the equation.
The book’s tone is conversational. Angrist is funny, irreverent, sometimes profane, and right on the money, such as when he discusses the impolitic remarks of James Watson, codiscoverer of the structure of DNA. “One wants to kick him under the table or pull him aside and say, ‘Dude. Stop.’ ”
Although Angrist is dedicated to sharing his DNA openly so that people will realize that “we are not our genes,” he admits feeling angst when he first saw his genetic information. He was relieved that he does not carry a potent risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, but a bit disconcerted by his higher-than-average risk for obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Since this book was finished, hundreds more complete genomes have been announced. As the DNA Age comes fully mature, the rest of humankind will have Angrist and his fellow pioneers to thank for helping make sense of it all.
Harper, 2010, 352 p., $26.99.
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"Genetic Dark Matter"
Searching for new sources to explain human variation
sciencenews.org
"Genome may be mostly junk after all"
sciencenews.org
Genomes, both DNA and RNA, are template ORGANISMS evolved, produced and employed by Earth's base primal organisms, the RNAs, for carrying out life processes, i.e. for enhancing RNAs reproduction for enhancing Earth's bio-energy constraint as much and as long as possible. This is the essence of life, of natural selection. It is the temporary postponement of life's constrained energy from being spent as fuel for the ongoing cosmos expansion.
Genomes serve the purpose of the RNAs just as we serve this-their purpose. The compositions of genomes are their evolutionary conglomerations, just as our compositions are, as the compositions of ALL Earth's organisms.
Just as some organs became superfluous in many other organisms in the course of their evolution likewise some genome sections become thus superfluous in the much much longer living genomes.
EARTH'S HAS ALWAYS BEEN AND STILL IS AN RNA LIFE.
All Earth's organisms are take-offs of RNAs.
Science should adjust its vision, comprehension and concepts.
Dov Henis
(Comments From The 22nd Century)
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