Today, the heads of the two projects dealing with decoding the genome will announce the completion of the first draft of the human genome.
by Tamara Traubman
The announcement will probably be made at the White House, in the presence of US President Bill Clinton. Decoding the genome is carried out in two competing projects: the Celera company and a public project, in which scientists from universities are partners.
In fact, the main importance of the announcement is political: it is a milestone, and it proves that the two companies have begun to coordinate their actions. A certain version of the draft of the public project has already been published online. On the other hand, Celera will not publish the information it collected tomorrow, but it has promised to publish the draft within a few months, after it has exhausted the economic potential inherent in it.
The two bodies that decode the genome decided in the last few days to take a time-out in their competition, and announce together the completion of the draft. The negotiations between them have not yet ended, but they are now considering publishing the data they collected in a joint article in a scientific journal.
The draft of the public project is built from large segments of DNA, whose location within the genome is known. Celera's draft consists of a puzzle of millions of small pieces, the location of most of which is still unknown. Celera has not yet published what percentage of the genome it has not yet been able to place, so its level of accuracy is unknown.
"It's very simply a revolution like the industrial revolution," said Dr. Frances Clush, a scientist at Selera. In response to a question about the benefit that will arise from decoding the genome, she said that "in the future we will move to personalized medicine, which will be much more effective. A person will go to the doctor and have a magnetic card, which will have all their genetic characteristics. That way, the doctor knew how to match him with a medicine that would not cause side effects, and would be the most effective for him."
However, the development of new drugs and technologies for medical diagnosis will continue for a long time. Dr. Eric Lander, director of the Genome Center at MIT and one of the prominent researchers in the public project, used Churchill's words to describe the situation: "In fact, we are now at the end of the beginning," he said.
{Appeared in Haaretz newspaper, 25/6/2000}
* The Hidan site was part of the IOL portal from the Haaretz group until 2002
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By the way, regarding the genome and the magnetic card.
Another interesting approach has been developed that deals with the evolution of blood types, (the research is interesting in this field.) But the thing is strange, that most of the time if people are asked something very simple and basic, such as what their blood type is, they don't know. And here I am actually stating a basic detail for self-awareness = freedom. Not everything should be in the hands of the authority alone or the doctor. A person should know his "contents".
And as a theme principle: "Your content is equal to your purpose" if only you are aware... (and again I must mention that even the conclusions of the same study do not have to be fixed.. in blind fanaticism, but it is worth studying for the same matter - reading).
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Is it possible to get details, clarification and sources for extracting additional information for researching the matter?
today the person