I Saw this on twitter today: That 98% of human DNA we once labeled 'junk'? Turns out
it's not so useless anymore | http://t.co/Wdt37tAp (via @TIMEHealthland) -- TIME.com
(@TIME).
Our book proposes that 98% of our DNA is essentially useless, but that didn't really sound right to me. Maybe, I thought, geneticists could only determine 2% of DNA's functions. Well it turns out that the junk in our DNA is actually very useful. That 2% they did know about corresponds to the some 21,000 genes humans. The other 80% acts as "switches" or controls for those genes. They turn certain genes on and off at different points in our life, and they may play a critical role in many common disease's who's exact origins are not fully known.
This has all been made possible by a project called ENCODE, which
is the 21st century equivalent to the Human Genome Project
(HGP) (even though the HGP was completed in 2003). So maybe its just the 2010's
equivalent to the 1990's HGP. Anyway, geneticists and medical researchers are
thrilled at the promises of ENCODE, which aims to give a fully detailed version
of how DNA works, which is to say, how humans work, or more generally, how life works, at the most fundamental
level. In essence, they want to provide a blueprint that can allow us to
understand ourselves and our diseases, and to hopefully make us a healthier
people.
One thing that was not mentioned in this article was these DNA
switches role in aging. It was mentioned that certain genes are activated and
deactivated during different points in our lifetime. This raises the question:
are we programmed to die? Perhaps as we exit reproductive age, our DNA kills us
off, as to reserve resources for the next generation of children and child
bearers. This seems that it could be plausible from an evolutionary
standpoint. In the past, elders would certainly be a great burden on a
resource scarce society; when the survival of the group is at stake, something
has to give, and the most dispensable cohort would be those who were less, lets
say, reproductively 'ripe'.
As this branch of genetics matures, I will be watching to see how
it fits into what I'll call, in a nod to physicists, the grand unified theory
of aging, and how that effects biomedical research relating to degenerative
diseases, especially ones dealing with the nervous system. I personally am
hoping that we are programmed to age until death, because
once geneticists learn how to manipulate DNA will the skill of a computer
programmer, we may just be able to program ourselves to live forever.
I agree with the fact that we are programmed to die. The average life expectancy is around 80 even after eliminating disease as the main cause of death. Researchers say that telomere function is related to aging because telomeres control DNA replication. When the telomeres become damaged or shortened, the ability of the cell to replicate DNA is lost and the cell dies. But yeah, I hope they can find out why so we can live to be 200 like Ricky Bobby.
ReplyDeletePatrick Ryan
Although hesitant, I also entertain the idea that we are "programmed to die". It would appear that this is indeed by way of the natural process of life which must take place, evolutionarily, for the continuity of humankind to remain existent. However, when considering a natural-born human's life versus the opportunity at a designer human life, I will very willingly accept the former. Although to some it would be ideal to live forever, the consequences, or should I say potential and certainly inevitable compensations, to that remodeling may prove to be slightly less than evolutionarily efficient.
ReplyDelete