I have been frequently been under temporary euphoria. No, I am not under any drug influence. The feeling is caused simply by reading science sections of BBC, NYT and of course some journal articles. As Richard Dawkins quoted someone[1], reality is indeed queerer than we can suppose. For now let us deal with a special part of it that is relevant to our lives and save the quantum reality for later. I know it is a little early to celebrate but I can not stop appreciating the flow of articles that link Genome to disease, even if it is “bad news”. The sense of knowing is indeed a state of bliss irrespective of the implication of the knowledge obtained. Why am I so upbeat?
Anyone who has been carefully screening the science sections frequently notices that there is a deluge of articles linking genes to disease. There are tens of diseases already linked (causation) to or correlated with presence or lack of a particular gene sequence. Now, this may scare the weak-hearted away from knowing his/her own genetic make-up, but in the current age, any one scared to face the truth is not a good survival machine as we have been digging out tons of it recently and in future we will only accelerate, assuming we survive what Carl Sagan calls “technological adolescence” [2] and the present self-destructive political order of the world.
So what if we know our Genome? What are the consequences? The consequences are enormous and in some rare occasions, catastrophic. How would you like it to know that you are 100 time more prone to cancer than an average person. However, there are “positive” sides to this knowledge as well. There are many diseases, for which and individual’s genetic predisposition can be ascertained well in advance so that the individual can take necessary precautions, mainly involving diet and exercise.
How does one decode his/her Genome? “23andMe” (More at [3, 4]) is one company among others that provide these services. You just need to provide the company with your saliva sample and the Genome is ready (There are other details about Genome one may be influenced by, which are more complicated and are not dealt here). It costs about $1000 now, which will become cheaper in near future. Now once you have your Genome, which by the way is a sequence of letters consisting A(Adenine), T(Thymine), G(Guanine) and C(Cytosine). The order of these nucleotides (letters) determines your predisposition to disease and probably determines, to some extent your behavior (Who said free-will exists in absolute sense?). Some recent research suggests that not only the sequence of the code but the location of the sequence in the Genome also determines some aspects, which means that to have a full picture we need to wait for a few more years. Now this code on a digital storage device may take up to 3GB and can be compressed to 0.75GB. Once you have the code you can just open the code with the software provided to see which diseases you are prone to (in probability terms).
This opens up the age-old debate of Nature vs Nurture (interestingly the supernatural died out in the debate). While there are some diseases about which we can do nothing yet as far as nurture is concerned, there are others such as heart-attack which can be kept in check under prescribed diet, exercise.
The title also contains “The Planet”, so where does that fit into the current discussion. Craig Venter is a geneticist; well he can also be labeled a heretic. He ("his" then company, Celera Genomics) competed with the government sponsored HGP (Human Genome Project) and came up with techniques for reading genome much faster than HGP could. While HGP team took more than decade to finish, he took less than half of that, but he started much later and finished along with HGP team. When Human Genome was unveiled in 2000 it was "called a tie".
Craig Venter(started Synthetic Genomics) has plans of producing semi-artificial to artificial life forms whose capabilities range from cleaning up environment to spitting out oil. He is currently figuring out a way to take the DNA of a particular organism and plug it into DNA-stripped cell of some other organism, so that the host will develop into the organism to whom the DNA belong to. Now he is trying to cut the DNA to level at which the organism can actually boot(similar to computer), in other word trying to figure out the shortest functional DNA. He says that they are months away from making this possible. There are others working to create life out of nothing but material, building from scratch (so much for the soul), which could take up to a decade. Imagine the consequences of producing life from scratch. But the religious will hardly cede the point as, for centuries, their sincerity has been questionable.
There are other people also working on the same problem so I don't want to project an impression that this is the lone person working on this problem, however he is a pioneer in this field.
It was observed by the US army earlier in 1940s that some bacteria evolved the ability to decompose TNT (Tri Nitro Toluene, an explosive; think about why this is an explosive, those from AP, India, this is 12th class organic chemistry). This happened where the containers of TNT were leaking and the bacteria around duly developed a mechanism to break down the bonds and use the energy. This also happened with another synthetic product Nylon (NYLON -> NY-LON -> New York - London). There are bacteria that evolved the ability to decompose Nylon. Such is the power of evolution, you give a source of organic energy and they will figure out a way to exploit that energy (see extremophiles for more astounding creatures).
What implications do these have? A bacteria that decomposes (some types of) waste can solve at least some of the environmental problems that humanity is plagued by. There are some interesting species of bacteria thriving in ocean bottom using hydrothermal energy. The idea is to develop bacteria that will mimic the photosynthetic process but will generate more useful product, oil or hydrocarbons. The subject will revolutionize this generation more than what computers did to the previous. Hopefully it will find a final solution to the dearth of energy which has triggered many wars over the last century and has caused untold suffering. There are solutions to many problems but the main question remains: will we implement them?
Finally, my euphoria is not because there appears to be a solution to these problems. It is because nature has some tricks up its sleeve only for us to discover, it is the extent of discovery and curiosity that probably sets humans apart from other animals and without these, life as lived by millions is just pedestrian and routine.
Reference:
[1]. Dawkins, Richard., The God Delusion, Houghton Mifflin, September 2006.
[2]. Sagan, Carl., Contact, Pocket, July 1, 1997.
[3]. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17dna.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=2&adxnnlx=1195312297-brHaW41/mWfo0XIZ8OiJ7w[4]. http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/15-12/ff_genomics?currentPage=all
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