From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Jun 20 2003 - 19:14:39 MDT
On Sat, 21 Jun 2003, Brett Paatsch wrote:
> I found it interesting that this researcher seems to see the benefits
> from the Human Genome Project and its successors coming not
> in time for his generation but rather for that of his children. Is it
> realism that makes him talk of the next generation or is he underrating
> the convergence of technologies in accelerating progress, or just
> trying not to over-hype I wonder.
It is especially surprising since Lander is the motivating force behind
the design of the MIT/Whitehead Genome Sequencing Center where in ~5-7 years
they redesigned how genome sequencing should be done (lots of special purpose
equipment) and came out way ahead of almost everyone else in terms of
throughput. And Lander is a fairly young guy.
I would suspect that he is trying not to over-hype (see my next related
message). Most (though not all) of the people in the genome community
are not aware of the effects of converging technologies (even though
current sequencing machines are based on the convergence of lasers;
micro-capillaries; advances in polymer matrices & fluorescent molecules;
CCDs and software.
It may be that Lander feels that this generation gathers the information
but it will take the next generation to produce therapeutics from it.
The problem is with something like 8000+ genetic diseases it is going
to take some time to identify them all. In particular, with rare
diseases it is going to take some time to identify enough individuals
to get the statistical significance one needs to do genotyping to
identify the "defective" gene(s). In other cases, with common diseases,
there may be a large number of genes involved, so in those cases one
needs very large sample populations and gaining access to those is
very very difficult. (Decode's work in Iceland or work in Estonia
to produce national databases come to mind.)
So it may be that we get "half" of the pie very easily (e.g. a single gene
disease in several families following a known inheritance pattern) and in
the case of the other "half" its a real nightmare (due to too few samples
or too many genes).
> Its also clear that philanthropic funding is still available for good
> causes.
Sure, read the Wired article about Rutan and the X-prize...
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/space.html
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 19:24:16 MDT