Decoding the DNA decoder

Vicki Bridges, FT Worth TX — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:57:24 GMT

Too bad Rosalind Franklin's contribution is never mentioned.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/
n6921/full/nature01399.html;
jsessionid=4FA46CA8D0907FB155AA44D92D4235E1

Decoding the DNA decoder

Pearl Duncan, New York, NY — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:18:27 GMT

Two heavyweights on the subject of DNA and the future of science and society: J. Craig Venter and Alan Boyle.

Decoding the DNA decoder

Alan Boyle — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:44:27 GMT

Pearl, you are too kind! Pearl is a wonderful woman I wrote about some time ago when I did a couple of stories about genetic genealogy.

Here's the story:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077146/

And here's Pearl's Web site:

http://www.pearlduncan.com/

Happy holidays to you, Pearl!

Decoding the DNA decoder

Red Pill Junkie, Mexico city — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 03:15:49 GMT

Sure, Craig's got a really big ego, but personally, I don't have any problem with people treating scientists like super-stars. It would be a nice change for our society.

Decoding the DNA decoder

BARBARA BROWN — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:20:45 GMT

I THOUGHT THIS TO BE ANAWESOME DISSERTATION ON DNA
AND GENOMES.
TRUE WE HAVE NOT BEGUN TO STUDY OUR PLANET EARTH AND ALL IT HAS TO OFFER.
GREAT ARTICLE.

Decoding the DNA decoder

Emma Morrow. Urbana, IL — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:07:13 GMT

This guy talks out of both sides of his mouth:

"You know, I don't think he personally believed what he was saying [about race and intelligence], but to some extent it doesn't matter. There is not going to be a genetic or skin color association with intelligence, or with disease. People find that some populations have a 63 vs. 52 percent incidence of hypertension or prostate cancer or other diseases, and claim that there's now a race-based determination. It's simply not the case.

Race is a social concept, it's not a scientific one. Our genomes - all 6.5 billion of us, soon to be 9 billion - are all going to be based on the same group of Africans that we all evolved from in very recent history. We'll see that continue. Anyplace you find populations that have been isolated - we call those ethnogeographic differences - anytime that there's inbreeding, you'll see certain traits that tend to get more emphasized in those populations vs. others. That's why people in certain regions start to look more alike after several generations."

Well, which is it? First he says that some populations have higher incidence of disease, and then he denies it. Then he says we're all the same, except the differences between groups of people whose ancestors came from different places!!

Seems to me he WANTS to tell the truth, that race matters, but is afraid to say so directly.

Decoding the DNA decoder

Dave Briggs Rockford Tn. — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:21:09 GMT

I saw a segment on him last night on Wired Science and it was great! He has done so much to move us forward in this field.
I know some PhD geneticists and know his work on the human genome is considered a great milestone in history!

Decoding the DNA decoder

a p garcia — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 02:00:52 GMT

As a person who studies history and Biology (Cell & Molecular Biology). I can't see how you you can talk about DNA, Genetics, & Genes without mentioning Gregor Mendel.

Decoding the DNA decoder

Chris R. Los Angeles, Ca — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 08:00:16 GMT

Food for thought: it has taken many years of reasearch and many accumulated man hours to begin to get close to creating a very simple synthetic organism, and we are still not there. There has been so many hours of collective intelligence working on this problem. It's hard to imagine the coutless other and much more complex forms of life on this planet coming into existence without a much greater intelligence. We find in theese endevors a necessity for active intelligence to create life. It not happening by chance, theese scientists are actively working. It suffices to say that there was an intelligent being in some form who was active in the creation of life.

Decoding the DNA decoder

Robert Massey — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:48:31 GMT

Evolution is just cumulative 'cause and effect'.
Ideas evolve; evolution itself evolves: survival of the best evolution theory!
The life cycle of rocks evolve:
1. They are born on a cliff; cracks fed by sun of day and freezing water mist in the night. Some rock molecules are more successful in contributing to this birth system.
2. Their weight gives them their first crawl down into the valley below where permanent or flash flood streams play ruff games rolling one rock against others, rounding sharp corners from their birth into rounder, faster, farther rolling beings. The stream rejoices in their splashing success.
A stone's roundings are its memories of competing with or 'loving' other stones it was thrown together with.
Again some molecules are more successful at this rounding and more successful in creating 'love children' or 'brain children' under 'synaptic like' attraction, 'social rules', correlations in sand and mud waves on river bottoms.
I should try to clarify this extreme 'idea'. Everything made of atoms live together, CONSISTENTLY, as their pairs of an electron and a positron make most likely. It's only more LIKELY for us to SEE the similarities between the molecules of men and the molecules of male apes, the differences between men and women than our similarity to stones. But I hope it helps us appreciate our creation out of ALL our ancestors male and female: the virtual pairs of the BIG BANG and before it. Its children, the galaxies, the stars, the atoms, the molecules, repeating of more successful molecules, their protection and concentration in cells, their more successful variation in recombination of parts of successful parents [sex] than dis-combination by energetic rays from hydrogen bomb sun.
3. The most successful stones, now pebbles, and their muddy children are buried, huddled, in great river deltas.
4. Their huge social weight makes them sink in the magma. This usually happens where the earth surface's great stone plates allow it.
5. This magma pulled by spin of earth, moon and sun, flows where mountains rise, magma hardens into new cliffs for new births.