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As the cost of genome sequencing drops, questions about its role in society are becoming more pressing

Just as CD players, personal computers, and HDTVs were prohibitively expensive when they were first released, so too was the cost of sequencing the entire genome of an individual. In 2003 that feat was accomplished for the staggering amount of $437,000,000 after 13 years of work. Today, CD players are ubiquitous and cheap; HDTVs are steadily entering the realm of affordability; and so, too, has the cost of sequencing a genome fallen precipitously. It will still set you back $1,000,000 and two months of time, but that is a tremendous savings over just five years ago. The inevitable is easy to see: one day—2015 by one predictive model’s account—the task of sequencing will cost $10 and take a handful of hours. And when the cost of sequencing a person’s genome becomes cheaper than a movie ticket, we have entered the time in which a person’s most private information is as accessible as a web page.

The immediate moral and ethical questions are boundless. Will fetuses be scanned for inherited traits? Will a mandatory national DNA registry be instituted? Will law enforcement use it as a blanket to throw over every crime scene? What is most important to keep in mind is that as sophisticated as genome sequencing is and with all the information it reveals, it is still at its core nothing more than a tool. It won’t replace good police work. It won’t replace a healthy diet and exercise. It won’t be an accurate indicator for a lot of things—we have only begun to understand how particular genes interact with their environment to bring a condition from a predisposition to a reality.

It’s time for us to think about these questions before we’re holding the results in our hands.

Via The Guardian

Researchers confirm what has been long suspected: the fearsome predators are indeed closer to chickens than lizards

Confirming what had been a long-held hypothesis among paleontologists, scientists have now verified at the molecular level that the closest living relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex are indeed birds; most specifically ostriches and chickens. Skeletal evidence has strongly borne this theory out in recent years as data from fossils has accumulated, but this new study of bone proteins definitively shows that more of the T. rex genome is similar to birds’ than to living reptiles’.

This was the first time proteins have been successfully extracted from dinosaur bones and analyzed to establish lineage. They were taken from preserved soft tissues in the bones of a 68 million-year-old T. rex excavated in 2003. Once extracted, they were compared with similar proteins from numerous other species of birds, reptiles, and other animals thought to be evolutionarily connected. The research will be published today in the journal Science.

Via NY Times

A study of social smokers and addicts reveals a likely genetic culprit

Most of us have friends who are social smokers. They’re the ones who don’t ever take work breaks under the overhang with the smoking crowd, but come Friday, they’re outside the bar having a butt or two as the night wears on. They rarely buy cigarettes because they don’t want a whole pack; they’re more likely to ask for a smoke from a friend. They never seem to get hooked and can go for weeks without even thinking about it. How do they do it when so many of the rest of us are hopelessly addicted?

Three new studies coming out of Iceland, France, and the United States are suggesting the reason may be genetic. The studies focused on a particular sequence of genes which code for a nicotine receptor on nerve cells. They found that smokers with a mutated version of the gene were 30 percent more likely to develop lung cancer than smokers who did not have the gene. Those with two copies of the mutation were an astounding 70 percent more likely to get the disease.

The next logical assumption the researchers made was that these genes were also what were responsible for driving smokers’ addictions. While there is evidence to suggest that is the case—the gene variant is linked to the brain’s reward centers—there is disagreement as to whether it is the root cause. It appears to act independently of addiction in regards to increasing the likelihood of an individual developing lung cancer, but it could at the same time be responsible for a heavy smoking habit, which itself would lead to disease.

Via Scientific America