Quotes About Genome

Some parts of the genome with a high frequency of Neanderthal variants shape hair and skin color and likely made the first Eurasians lighter-skinned than their African ancestors.

You may discover that a certain sequence of letters in your autosomal DNA is typically found in someone with Finnish heritage or Korean ancestry. Only a few years ago the world of science was turned upside down when it was discovered that in ancient times two nonhuman species contributed to the human genome.

This is because our personal genetic tree is not equivalent to our genealogical tree, which is to say that not every one of our direct ancestors has contributed to our genome.

In just the last few years we have learned that 85 percent of all people carry DNA from Neanderthals, an entirely different species that lived until 27,000 years ago. If the research on the human genome hasn't completely destroyed the idea of genetic purity, our newly discovered Neanderthal ancestors show how truly absurd the notion is.

Other regions that have been influenced by the Neanderthal genome are implicated in human diseases, such as lupus, Crohn's disease, and type 2 diabetes, and even in behavior, such as addiction to cigarettes.

The question is, are there useful things that we can do with the results of a genome sequence that would bring benefit? And the answer is, today, should the majority of people go and have their genome sequenced? Probably not. But are there particular circumstances in which genome sequencing is really helpful? Yes, there are.

It will be the mother of all telescopes, and you can bet it will do for astronomy what genome sequencing is doing for biology. The clumsy, if utilitarian, name of this mirrored monster is Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, or LSST. You can't use it yet, but a peak in the Chilean Andes has been decapitated to provide a level spot for placement.

Although not yet routine, many cancer centers have the technology to sequence some or all of a patient's cancer genome. This can provide massive amounts of valuable information about your cancer, including whether you have genetic mutations and other abnormalities for which new drugs are available.

If you get very fine, accurate, and inexpensive control over your genome, you can fundamentally change the kind of organism you are. You are extending human capacity.

Most organisms have loads of junk DNA - less pejoratively, noncoding DNA - cluttering their cells.

We will have to make a decision, as we go into new environments outside of earth, whether we want to drag along with us all our pathogens. We can, or we can't - it's up to us - but I consider that part of genome engineering is how we interact with the huge part of our genome which is our microbiome.

Do codons overlap? In other words, as we read along the genetic message do we find a base which is a member of two or more codons? It now seems fairly certain that codons do not overlap.

Somewhere along the line, nucleotides were edged apart to let new ones in; maybe viruses moved in, carrying along bits of other, foreign genomes; radiation from the sun or from outer space caused tiny cracks in the molecule, and humanity was conceived." – Lewis Thomas

An important finding is that by determining the genome sequences of an entire family, one can identify many DNA sequencing errors and thus greatly increase the accuracy of the data. This will ultimately help us understand the role of genetic variations in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease.

We're collecting about 100,000 telomere lengths in saliva samples and then looking at how those relate to both the extensive longitudinal clinical records that Kaiser is collecting and the genome sequence variations.

Every cell in our body, whether it's a bacterial cell or a human cell, has a genome. You can extract that genome - it's kind of like a linear tape - and you can read it by a variety of methods. Similarly, like a string of letters that you can read, you can also change it. You can write, you can edit it, and then you can put it back in the cell.

While the Environmental Genome Project does not seek to assign allele frequencies, we are aware of the importance of accurate allele frequency estimates for future epidemiologic studies and the large sample sizes such estimates will require.

I think something very simple that everybody can do is they can participate in medical research as subjects. Personal genome project, for example, will take on as many subjects as we can find.

If you're looking for your own idea of your own identity you know the human genome may not be the best place to look for it. You're just looking at a bunch of viruses.

Well, the human genome has massive redundancy - that means that two per cent of the DNA does all the work of instructing the ribosomes that build the proteins that make up the cells of your body. Ninety-eight per cent of your DNA just sits there doing nothing. Taking up space in the gene.

For each gene in your genome, you quite often get a different version of that gene from your father and a different version from your mother. We need to study these relationships across a very large number of people.

I'm fascinated with genetic science, and I have been for a very long time. I always look at science and technology because I think that the developments in my lifetime have been so remarkable - and we're only at the tip of the iceberg with projects like decoding the human genome.

The request had been impossible to refuse, delivered as it was in Darcy's perennial air of wry cheer—a demeanor Aaron was certain was tattooed onto the English genome, right beside wry despair.

Dorian Purcell, working with a federal agency, funded a reckless research project into the engineering of the human genome and sited the work in rural Utah—but now people were dying here. Progress was real progress only when it evolved naturally and thoughtfully from the history of human experience and accumulated wisdom. When it was imposed in contempt for that experience and wisdom, then progress was in fact radical destruction.