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DR. FEERO is a family physician with a doctorate in human genetics from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a senior adviser for genomic medicine in the Office of the Director at the National Human Genome Research Institute. Our understanding of the genome is changing rapidly and drastically. For starters, the Human Genome Project has revealed that humans are, on a numerical basis, genetically less complex than a mustard plant (Arabidopsis). In fact, our genome contains between 20,000 and 25,000 sequences suggestive of “genes” encoding proteins, whereas Arabidopsis contains about 27,000. If that doesn't make much sense to you, don't...

If inherited genes are not to blame for our most common illnesses, how can we find out what is? Since the human genome was sequenced, over 10 years ago, hardly a week has gone by without some new genetic "breakthrough" being reported. Last week five new "genes for Alzheimer's disease" generated sometimes front-page coverage across the globe. But take a closer look and the reality is very different. Among all the genetic findings for common illnesses, such as heart disease, cancer and mental illnesses, only a handful are of genuine significance for human health. Faulty genes rarely cause, or even...

Ten years after President Bill Clinton announced that the first draft of the human genome was complete, medicine has yet to see any large part of the promised benefits. For biologists, the genome has yielded one insightful surprise after another. But the primary goal of the $3 billion Human Genome Project — to ferret out the genetic roots of common diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s and then generate treatments — remains largely elusive. Indeed, after 10 years of effort, geneticists are almost back to square one in knowing where to look for the roots of common disease. One sign of...

The Human Genome Project attracted investment beyond what a rational analysis would have predicted. There are pros and cons to that, says Philip Ball. If a venture capitalist had invested in sequencing the human genome, what would she have to show for it? For scientists, the Human Genome Project (HGP) might lay the foundation of tomorrow's medicine, with drugs tailored to your genetics. But a venture capitalist would want medical innovations here and now, not decades hence. Nearly ten years after the project's formal completion, there's not much sign of them.A team of researchers in Switzerland now argue that the...

Dedicated scientists are working hard to close the gaps, fix the errors and finally complete the human genome sequence. ...Deanna Church has few distractions from the job that lies before her. On her computer sit 888 open 'tickets', or outstanding problems with the human genome sequence. Although that number fluctuates, it's a not-so-subtle reminder that she and her team at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) have a long way to go... --snip-- By April 2003, the sequencing had surpassed the international project's technical definition of completion — the sequence contained fewer than 1 error per 10,000 nucleotides and...

I ran across "The Language of God" at the library a couple of weeks ago, and snatched it up. I had read brief interviews with the author, Dr. Francis S. Collins of the Human Genome Project, and I was curious. He is a world-renowned geneticist who is unabashedly Christian, so I figured Collins would have an interesting perspective on pretty much everything. I was right. "The Language of God" is a very engaging book, well written and thoughtful. It's a couple of years old, but it weighs in on some topics mentioned in this column and in the resulting online...

Francis S. Collins, the Christian geneticist who led the project to map the human genome, announced that he will be stepping down as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. After serving for 15 years at NHGRI – part of National Institute of Health – Collins said Wednesday it was time for him to pursue other professional opportunities such as writing projects that dealt with the future of personalized medicine. But he admitted that he did not have a clear game plan for now. “I am going to take a kind of sabbatical for a few months – to...

The researchers hope to scale the work up to the whole of the genome A close-up view of the human genome has revealed its innermost workings to be far more complex than first thought.The study, which was carried out on just 1% of our DNA code, challenges the view that genes are the main players in driving our biochemistry. Instead, it suggests genes, so called junk DNA and other elements, together weave an intricate control network. The work, published in the journals Nature and Genome Research, is to be scaled up to the rest of the genome. Views transformed...

The believer Francis Collins -- head of the Human Genome Project -- discusses his conversion to evangelical Christianity, why scientists do not need to be atheists, and what C.S. Lewis has to do with it. By Steve Paulson Aug. 07, 2006 | As the longtime head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins is one of America's most visible scientists. He holds impeccable scientific credentials -- a medical degree as well as a Ph.D. in physics -- and has established a distinguished track record as a gene hunter. He's also an evangelical Christian, someone who has no qualms about professing...

Science and religion have long had an uneasy relationship, at best. But Dr. Francis S. Collins believes the two can coexist happily and that a scientist can worship God equally well in a cathedral or a laboratory. Collins, a physician-geneticist, led the Human Genome Project, an international research initiative that mapped all 3.1 billion base pairs in human DNA. The monumental project took a crew of scientists deep inside the uncharted landscape of the human body. At the end, they had what amounts to a blueprint for building a human being and a unique reference to use in developing diagnoses,...

Close window Published online: 17 May 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060515-12 Human genome completed (again)Scientists today publish the sequence of chromosome 1: the largest and last of the human chromosomes to be done and dusted. News@nature finds out what this latest milestone means.Helen Pearson Haven't scientists already announced the completion of the human genome? Well, yes. Twice. In 2000, two teams declared with great fanfare that they had produced a draft copy of the human genetic code, but there were many gaps and errors in this version. Another announcement, in 2003, marked the completion of a far more accurate 'finished' sequence...

Henry Harpending is about to titillate the world's conspiracy theorists with one of the most politically incorrect academic papers of the new millennium. Why, he and his colleagues at the University of Utah asked, have Jews of European descent won 27 per cent of the Nobel Prizes given to Americans in the past century, while making up only 3 per cent of the population? Why do they produce more than half the world's chess champions? And why do they have an average IQ higher than any other ethnic group for which there's reliable data, and nearly six times as many...

The Human Genome Project has given mankind its genetic instruction book, writes Francis Collins. Revolutions in human understanding come along once in a long while. Though one generation's revolutionary idea is often taken for granted by the next, no future generation is likely to ignore the dramatic advances in understanding of heredity - launched 50 years ago by the discovery of the structure of DNA, and culminating this year with the completion of the Human Genome Project. The impact of the sequencing of the human genome will stretch decades into the future as medical researchers turn this treasure chest of...

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have completed the finished sequence of the human genome, or genetic blueprint of life, which holds the keys to transforming medicine and understanding disease. Less than three years after finishing the working draft of the three billion letters that make up human DNA and two years earlier than expected, an international consortium of scientists said on Monday the set of instructions on how humans develop and function is done. "We put out the draft sequence as a way of getting it out to scientists as quickly as we could. It gives them something to work with...