Genetic project launched
From one to 10 to 1,000: Genetic scientists today unveiled an ambitious project to sequence the genomes of at least 1,000 people from across the globe.
Dr. David Altshuler of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute in Cambridge will co-chair the international consortium running the project, the National Institutes of Health announced.
The project underscores how quickly genome-sequencing technology is advancing. In 2006, it was big news when even one person’s genome was sequenced. Last year, Harvard’s George Church won headlines with his plan to sequence – and publish – the genomes of 10 people. That data is expected to come out soon.
Now, the thousand-genome project aims to turn up medically useful genetic information by providing the most detailed and comprehensive look yet at the genetic variations among humans.
At its peak, it is expected to generate data equivalent to sequencing two human genomes per day. Its projected costs: between $30 and $50 million.
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Elizabeth Cooney covers health for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. She
previously reported on business and was an editor at the paper. Earlier in
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This is great news for patients who want to work with their doctors to proactively prepare for the worst. However, it is my impression that as is the utility of detecting other disease markers, the ability to associate certain regions of DNA with disease could also terrorize patients as well. It's a bit like having an unidentified mass show up on your X-ray and your doctor telling you that it could be cancer. Having within ones genetic code an allele that is associated with a particular disease (ex: 25 of 30 individuals with the disease carry the particular sequence) doesn't really mean that you either currently have or will have the disease b/c maybe 75% of the general population carries it as well, and of those individuals, 99% do not have the disease. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that knowing you carry such a stretch of DNA may cause a lot of paranoid people. Also, the information could become available to the wrong people and insurance premiums for people carrying AACCAATTAACCAATTC could be higher than for those not carrying that sequence. How will the creation of a system of universal healthcare take that into account?