I'm a published magazine article writer.
Very anti-climatic
Very non-electronic :-)

I was less than ecstatic with the low impact presentation by the magazine
but very pleased that they actually published it. Will be interesting to see
how many of the magazines 60,000 odd buyers actually read the article and
then go looking for the associated references, which are all on a website.

Along the way I found an interesting quote by Craig Venter, the man who by
his own personal drive caused the human genome project to produce a finished
result about 4 or 5 years before it otherwise would have. (He is a VERY tall
poppy and many fellow scientists hate him). He was Time's man of the year in
2000 (Gorbachev, John Paul 2, Bush 1 and Reagan feature in some other
years). Unlike some other company heads who are just faces for the true
scientists who do the work, Venter provided the scientific brains that
started the private operation off and maintained it. Nobel laureates were
not beneath working for him.

When they were well on the way to completion he made the following comments
in interviews. Not quite how I would have put it in the first case but his
point is clear:
Remember, this is "Mr GE" speaking:

    "As a civilization, we know far less than one percent
    of what will be known about biology, human
    physiology, and medicine.
    My view of biology is `We don't know shit.'

and

    "In everyday language the talk is about a gene for this and a
    gene for that. We are now finding that that is rarely so.
    The number of genes that work in that way can almost
    be counted on your fingers, because we are just not
    hard-wired in that way." ......... "You cannot define
    the function of genes without defining the influence
    of the environment. The notion that one gene
    equals one disease, or that one gene produces one
    key protein, is flying out of the window."

Dr. J. Craig Venter, Time's Scientist of the year (2000). President of the
Celera Corporation.

What puzzles and somewhat bothers me, is that the developments we are doing
with GE rely on the old model and already old science to make their
assurances of safety and certainty. The human genome project (HGP) found
that, rather than the 100,000++ genes they thought we had, we really only
had 30,000 to 35,000. What they also found was that each gene produces about
10 proteins on average. ie the vast complexity we see in humans compared
with eg mice and wild mustard (each with about the same number of genes) is
carried out outside the basic coding structure. ie there is a very
substantial information overlay that is not evident in the gene count.

If you find "the gene for xxx" as people keep doing all the time, when you
transfer this into another species you typically take 10 proteins along for
the ride. Most of those aren't going to be involved with xxx and parts of
what xxx did may very well have been modified by other genes that haven't
been transferred.

This totally confounds the "standard model" proposed by Crick way back when,
where one gene was supposed to produce one protein which caused one action.
The predictability and reliability of our whole GE model relies on this
untrue assumption being true. Where it will lead us is yet to be seen.

Thoughts.



        Russell McMahon

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