Ozzy Osbourne has made his contribution to science. He, and his wife Sharon, have donated their DNA to be mapped to TEDMED Life Technologies.
Ozzy's genome was done first and they found many different traits of his mapped in there, including a predisposition to alcoholism, and a distant relation to a line of Neanderthals. Maybe we didn't need to map his genes to figure those things out.
This article is pretty interesting because there were genes that they found in his DNA that I didn't even know could be a genetic trait. The article also explained that they are looking to gather more genomes from more musicians because they believe they have mapped a gene that codes for a predisposition to musical ability. If they can prove the connection between that expressed trait and a gene, then maybe I'll start believing all the other crazy traits they think are coded in our DNA
Interesting article. I like the dichotomy between Sharon and Ozzy, it really does portray what the conflicts are amongst the general public. Do you want to know what your genes can tell you? Its interesting that Ozzy was so against knowing if they discovered a gene that predisposed him to some disease. Sharon on the other hand wanted to know all her genes could tell her. I'm with Sharon on this one, map my genes, and give me the low down.."I want to know whats going to happen to me". However, I do understand the Ozzy's out there who may not know how to handle the information they are given or just don't want to think about whats to come. The debate over what to do with the genetic information is a valid one and I definitely see the potential negative implications, however, I just can't help thinking that if I knew exactly what I was predisposed to, I may have a better chance of fighting what I can see, as opposed to fighting blindly.
ReplyDeleteThe technology for genetic mapping is really exciting and I am anxious for this to be more accessible for everyone. I hope they keep the momentum going with this and put the information in the hands of physicians who can apply it to patient care.
It' an interesting article. It shows one of the debates that is always going on with genetic testing which is whether or not it's necessary for humans to test their own DNA to find out what disorders they are most likely to have at some point in their lives. I think that for some disorders genetic testing can be very useful, disorders like those that if caught early can be treated. I think for other disorders, the ones that there is really nothing that can be done to help the people who suffer from them, it's kind of like why even bother finding out. There's nothing you can do about it so why torture yourself about it. Just live your life.
ReplyDeleteAs for the part about them finding a gene that could be linked to musical ability. I just can't help but thinking that its kind of useless. Is it going to be that when we have children that we're going to test their DNA to find out what they would be good at in life and force them down that path? I just have trouble finding what good could come from finding these type of genes.
The article was good demonstrating that sequencing the human genome is getting faster and cheaper. The more people who are using it the more people can connect the dots with finding out their relationships to others and past heritages making family trees easier to map and finding out where people's ancestry have been.
ReplyDeleteFor Ozzy certain abilities that he has such as with music is hard to determine if it were genetically related since people can be trained with that ability or have voice and instrumental synthesizers to enhance those qualities when they don't have those talents. So far mapping genes is still expensive for the average person and musicians do have enough income to have them mapped and there may just happen to be a common correlation. When enough sequencing is further studied the music gene may be disproved.
The article was Interesting, humans testing their DNA to find disorders they might have in future is great, but spending money to find a gene related to musical ability is useless because a person without the gene linked to musical ability can still be a musician by learning music.
ReplyDelete