18 June 2008

"My DNA is my data"

WIRED's Thomas Goetz fumes about a development in the world of genetic testing: California health regulators have demanded that several genetic testing start-ups halt operations until they prove they meet quality and reliability standards. Goetz writes,

To my mind, genetic information is a new sort of personal information that the state and even the physician community are terribly slow and old-fashioned in reckoning with. [...] This is not a dark art, province of the select few, as many physicians would have it. This is data. This is who I am. Frankly, it's insulting and a curtailment of my rights to put a gatekeeper between me and my DNA.

What does the TED community think? Discuss in the blog comment section on this blog, below, and on the forums on talks by Craig Venter and Juan Enriquez.

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31 May 2008

WSF report: Your Biological Biography

TED's Matthew Trost reports from this Saturday session of the World Science Festival:

Nobel Prize winner and cell biologist Paul Nurse moderates a discussion between the leader of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, physician and geneticist James Evans, and sociologist Nikolas Rose after an introductory piece of context by Misha Angrist, who recently had his genome sequenced and analyzed by private genotyping firms and is writing a book on it.

+ Francis Collins offered some explanation on the basics of genomics, namely what a genome is and what it does. He classifies the genome as basically an "instruction book." The human instruction book, printed on regular paper in a regular font size, would be as tall as the Washington Monument.

+ Drawing from Angrist's thoughts on trying to find some predictive value in what he learned from having his genome sequenced, James Evans puts forward a discussion on Alzheimer's -- the possibility of predicting one's own risk. He asks whether knowing one's chances is valuable, or whether it just needlessly damages people emotionally if they find out they're at high risk. He says there has to be a way of managing the public desire for the information with the possible personal consequences of getting it. He stresses: genomic "risk" stretches across one's whole lifetime.

+ Collins shares the results of a study in which one group was told their risk of Alzheimer's. Even if they had a high probability, it didn't ruin their lives. Instead, it helped them think more about preparing for the possibility.

+ Nikolas Rose objects to the definition of the genome as an "instruction book." He wants to "dethrone" genomics. He says "genomic metaphysics" has been creeping into science and public understanding. This is a misinterpretation of genetics. Genes are not the "source of who I am." There are lots of environmental factors that must be taken into account as well.

+ Everybody agrees that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act that George W. Bush signed into law several days ago is a good thing.

+ Angrist weighs in: Genomics is not something we can "put back." He reiterates the need to manage it and teach people about the complexities.

+ Paul Nurse offers a philosophical question: what about determinism? Collins isn't impressed by questions on determinism. It's been an open question since long before genomics. James Evans, meanwhile, isn't convinced we have free will. The group agrees that changing the justice system based on the question won't work. Courts aren't standing for deterministic arguments as a criminal defense.

+ Collins: after all, half of all people in this audience have a genotype that makes them genetically predisposed by sixteen-fold more than the other half to commit crimes like murder. Those are the people with a Y chromosome -- males!

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15 November 2007

Why can't we grow new energy? Juan Enriquez on TED.com

Biologist and futurist Juan Enriquez talks about the potential of bioenergy. Our current energy sources -- coal, oil, gas -- are ultimately derived from ancient plants -- they're "concentrated sunlight." He asks, Can we learn from that process and accelerate it? Can we get to the point where we grow our own energy as efficiently as we grow wheat? (Less than a month after this talk, his company announced a process to do just that.) (Recorded September 2007 in New York City. Duration: 18:16.)

Watch Juan Enriquez's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.

Read more about Juan Enriquez on TED.com.

NEW: Read the transcript >>

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08 October 2007

Speaker updates: Craig Venter, Jeff Han

Updates from TED speakers:

After a whirlwind of media speculation over the weekend following a story by The Guardian, biologist Craig Venter (watch his TED2005 speech) will announce today at the annual meeting of his institute in San Diego that his team has built a synthetic chromosome, using lab chemicals. "A giant leap forward in the development of designer genomes", writes the newspaper.
Mr Venter's autobiography, "A Life Decoded: My Genome, My Life" is scheduled to be published in two weeks.

At TED2006 computer scientist Jeff Han demonstrated his prototype of a revolutionary multitouch screen (watch video). At TED2007 he brought along a larger, wall-size version that TEDsters could try out. The interactive media wall, built by Han's company Perceptive Pixel, will be sold by Nieman Marcus in the US. Price tag: $100,000 USD.

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12 September 2007

Reading the books of Craig and Jim

A few days ago TED2005 speaker Craig Venter (watch his talk) announced that his lab has finished sequencing a single human's genome -- his own. At his old company, Celera, Venter worked on sequencing his genome and four other genomes all mixed together, creating an anonymous composite. He told Newsweek:

What we got this time was a diploid genome—a genome that includes both sets of chromosomes from both my parents. We were surprised at how much variation between individuals there was.
You mean there's more genetic difference between one person and the next than we previously thought?
Absolutely. It's quite comforting to me as an individualist that we're not very close to being clones of one other. (...)
Why did you choose to decode your own genome?
It goes back to the government's notion that genetics has to be secret and anonymous. But there's really nothing anonymous with your genetic sequence—it's the ultimate identifier. I thought it was showing proper leadership—to show that I don't think there's any risk in it. I don't know if there's any scientist in this field that wouldn't want to have his own genome known.
(Read the full interview)

Nobel laureate (for co-discovering the double-helix structure of DNA), and fellow TED2005 speaker (watch his talk), James Watson couldn't probably agree more: he also had his genome fully sequenced three months ago. "Project Jim", as it was called, took 67 days of sequencing time and cost around USD 1 million. (More in this Newsweek story from June.)

The raw sequencing data of both Watson and Venter are publicly available in the US National Center for Biotechnology Information's Trace Archive.

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