As I see it | We can now watch our own genes dance
Modern biology reveals a real miracle: how broken pieces of molecules evolved into a species that became conscious of its own genetic make-up
In the early 2000s, the news media were full of stories about the near completion of the human genome project, which promised scientific and medical wonders to come. Back then, I even wrote a story or two about the mainland Chinese contributions to the groundbreaking international project.
The memory came back to me more than a week ago when a press release landed in my inbox, announcing the human genome imaged in 4D. The latest project shows how genes interact, fold and reposition themselves. They code how cells function and divide, eventually leading to the formation of tissues and organs.
Sitting on my bookshelves gathering dust is the unusually thick February 15, 2001 edition of Nature, the international science journal. I collected it at the time for the sense of occasion because that issue carried the maps and annotations of 94 per cent of the human genome, published for the first time.
The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, as the introductory paper explains, was “a collaboration involving 20 groups from the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany and China”.
Today, it’s unlikely we will see such large-scale cooperation between countries. A quarter of a century ago, it was a very different world.
The latest research, carried out mostly at Northwestern University in the United States, sounds fascinating. Understandably, though, it barely made the news.