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Unraveling the DNA myth

Interesting article in Harpers, esp the part I quoted below.

UNRAVELING THE DNA MYTH

The spurious foundation of genetic engineering

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE4/DNA-Myth-CommonerFeb02.htm

The list of malfunctions [in cloning and genetically engineered crops] gets little notice; biotechnology companies are not in the habit of publicizing studies that question the efficacy of their miraculous products or suggest the presence of a serpent in the biotech garden.

The mistakes might be dismissed as the necessary errors that characterize scientific progress. But behind them lurks a more profound failure. The wonders of genetic science are all founded on the discovery of the DNA double helix-by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953-and they proceed from the premise that this molecular structure is the exclusive agent of inheritance in all living things: in the kingdom of molecular genetics, the DNA gene is absolute monarch. Known to molecular biologists as the "central dogma," the premise assumes that an organism's genome-its total complement of DNA genes---should fully account for its characteristic assemblage of inherited traits.7 The premise, unhappily, is false. Tested between 1990 and 2001 in one of the largest and most highly publicized scientific undertakings of our time, the Human Genome Project, the theory collapsed under the weight of fact. There are far too few human genes to account for the complexity of our inherited traits or for the vast inherited differences between plants, say, and people. By any reasonable measure, the finding (published last February) signaled the downfall of the central dogma; it also destroyed the scientific foundation of genetic engineering and the validity of the biotechnology industry's widely advertised claim that its methods of genetically modifying food crops are "specific, precise, and predictable"8 and therefore safe. In short, the most dramatic achievement to date of the $3 billion Human Genome Project is the refutation of its own scientific rationale.
 

chickenman

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Its a decent enough article, but it has problems. Scientists today don't think its a 1:1 ratio gene:protein. I was never taught that, biologists don't believe it, so the article is essentially criticizing an idea that no-one holds to be true anymore. The whole point of the argument is rendered useless, the fact is, no-one believes what the author is criticizing them for believing. Alternative splicing is recognised as a fundamental process in gene processsing, biologists know and recognise the importance of chaperones.

The article also seems to be saying that the human genome project was a waste of time becuase single genes aren't 100 percent responsible for their products. The chaperones and spliceosomes which alter gene products are themselves encoded in the genome. It is still the genome which encodes for the proteins which alter other genes.

Because no-one assumes that the genome is going to be able to tell biologists all they need to know (despite the assertions of this article) work is currently underway to compile the proteome and transcriptome.
 
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