Wednesday, January 26, 2011

List of Celebrities Who Had Genomes Sequenced

While crawling in The Virtual Dumpster I call the internet:

I was checking out my facegook news feed and Io9 magazine has an article in it about the Orangutan Genome discoveries.  Orangutan genome has not changed for 15 million years.  This is in comparison with human and chimpanzee have experienced large-scale structural rearrangements of their genome that may have accelerated their evolution blah blah blah...I will spare you. Not everyone likes to read this stuff.

I like a good science news article, me thinks. Then me thinks...back in October Scientific American had an article about Ozzy Osbourne's genome.  It was the top science article of the day


When I Googled "What famous people have had their genome sequenced?" = About 108,000 results (0.18 seconds)


First of all WHOLE GENOME SEQUENCING (wiki) is a big deal.

Whereas DNA typing can be as simple as 'YOU ARE THE DADDY' results on the Mo Po show or more complex showing ancestral percentages and health data.

And they just didn't have a list...I had to dig around.
Sequencing is a million dollar process on just one subject!  There is a big push to make Genomics more affordable. There is the project called The X prize.  [dead link X Prize was cancelled].

UPDATE 2014: The prize was the first X prize competition to be cancelled in 18 yrs. This was because costs in genetic sequencing were rapidly going down. (source) A California company now offers whole genome sequencing for $1000 Ilumina



 

This is it THE LIST:
Ozzy Osbourne
Larry King
Glen Close 
Steven Hawking
Paul Allen Microsoft co-founder Of Microsoft
Craig Venter American Biologist
James Watson  co-discoverer of DNA
Desmond Tutu Archbishop
Sitting Bull Lakota Chief
Inuk the Ice Man from Greenland
Esther Dyson Swedish notable techie entrepreneur
Steven Quake Engineer who designed a cheaper test...
Hermann Hauser entrepreneur
Marjolein Kriek Dutch clinical geneticist
George Church Harvard molecular geneticist.

SNPedia has a compiled list of 55 public genomes listed with some minimal summary. [link]

There has got to be more...maybe they aren't telling.


Another thing I dug up:
"The Human Genome Project (HGP) refers to the international 13-year effort, formally begun in October 1990 and completed in 2003, to discover all the estimated 20,000-25,000 human genes and make them accessible for further biological study". [source]

There are of course big time problems with what is now labeled  ELSI (Ethical, Legal and Social Issues)
Their FAQ page has all the questions you might wonder when it comes to genomes...[link here]
 The government...answering your questions.


Summary of my crawling the Virtual Dumpster on this topic is:
Genomic studies should be of everyone's interest.  They are taking pieces of our literal human code and trying to find out how it ticks.  With any theological beliefs aside, you must be interested!  Although what they are finding out is still in the baby stages...It is a tremendous undertaking that will be scientifically revealed possibly in future generations!

If it were up to me, I would of been one of those hocus pocus believers: I would of said in the past,
"Yeah I know that maggots come from rotting meat.  You guys are so fucking smart!  Cool name Spontaneous Generation!  And it looks better after I ate a bunch of those funny berries"!

They are actually looking for volunteers for genome study in one of the websites I traveled to.
[Personal Genome Project looking for next wave of volunteers Link]


The total genetic difference between humans and chimps, in terms of number of bases, sums to about 4% of the genome.

(Evolution Vs. Creation Chart below raised my brow as I dug it out of the virtual dumpster...)

Here is a chart that comes from a 2010 Gallup Poll on belief systems and percentages:



"Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding".

1 comment:

BB said...

Even in a couple thousand years they wouldn't be able to figure out Ozzy Osbourne except that he's probably going to be preserved just by the drugs and alcohol. Pickled!! haha. good post.