Sounds like a rather pessimistic point of view from Mr. Zimmer. "Quick Fixes"??? Breakthroughs in science and medicine don't occur overnight. Scientist have been studying cancer for years to no avail, perhaps the way to get to the root of cancer is through anouther route, genomic studies. These people are paving the way for the next generation. Complete Genomics has already produced fully sequenced human genomes for $5000.
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Neither possibility bodes well for genomic medicine. If diseases are controlled by powerful but rare variants, scientists will first have to track them all down. If diseases are caused by common variants in unlucky combinations, scientists will have to test each person for variants on hundreds or even thousands of genes. Doctors who want to treat these diseases won't simply be able to fix a single defective gene in every person with a particular disease; they'll have to sort through a jumble of variations to figure out why some people get sick and some don't.
As complicated as our individual human genomes are, a person's health depends on much more. A human body contains about a trillion cells, but it houses somewhere between 10 trillion and 100 trillion microbes, which have a powerful influence on our well-being. Some help us digest nutrients, others help block dangerous pathogens. In 2007, microbiologists launched the Human Microbiome Project to sequence the genes of these beasts. While each microbe species may have just a few hundred or a thousand genes, collectively they outnumber human genes by 100 to 1. Scientists are compiling a growing catalog of foreign genes, but the data so far do not explain much. Each person's microbial jungle may be a unique mix of species, making it hard to draw any general lesson.
Research on microbes is leading scientists to think about networks of genes that interact with each other in a complex, personal ecosystem. Biologists are using a similar approach to understand how thousands of genes can work together in a single cell. They're adapting the methods of engineering, breaking these gene networks down into components that plug together, much like the components of a radio. If they can do that, they'll have taken a big step toward being able to repair our gene networks when they break down. Don't go betting your stock portfolio that all this will happen next year, or even next decade. But it's a sound wager in the long run.
Zimmer is the author of "Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life.", which will be published in paperback in July.
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