First Irish Genome sequenced

bleg

And it will have some interesting results... watch this space


http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727770.201-first-irish-genome-sequenced.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0907/1224278367050.html

Gerry.L

And in lay-mans terms, what results would these be?

maninasia

One genome is not enough, need a lot more to get concrete conclusions.

Biologic

maninasia wrote: »

One genome is not enough, need a lot more to get concrete conclusions.

Why? There's no point in getting ahead of ourselves with national level genetic studies when we're not finished with the species level stuff yet. I'll tell the lads to get going on the concrete conclusions though.
One genome is loads, especially when there's already so many human sequences out there for comparison. What we actually need is for bioinformatics to catch up with genomics. Too much emphasis was initially placed on getting this information without focusing on how we can translate it into useful products or therapies.
As of 2007 we've had about 100 gigabases of information (100billion base pairs of DNA sequenced). This is colossal. What good is it doing to increase this number while our ability to identify genes, deduce gene function and predict the 3D structure of resulting proteins lags way behind? A sequenced genome is just a list of genetic bases, "concrete conclusions" (often an oxymoron in science) come from an understanding of what these bases mean and an ability to interpret the information.

maninasia

One genome is still not enough to draw conclusions about the population.

Biologic

Neither is a million if we can't make sense of it.

maninasia

That was not the aim for this research.

Biologic

Hah. Dont give me that. You brought up the issue of genome numbers and conclusions in the first place! You bring up a point, I debate it, you say your initial point was invalid anyway so therefore I'M wrong.Tu quoque. At the very least you could stand by your wacky statements.

maninasia

The point of the research was to draw conclusions on the genetic make-up of the population in Ireland to see if it differed with the UK, European make-up etc, basically to see if there was an Irish genetic signature. The authors seem to think they can conclude the Irish population significantly differs in it's make-up from others from the sequencing just one genome. Well that's plain too little data to be drawing conclusions on population make-up on.

You are off on a tangent about what the genes are coding for, that's not the issue here and it's certainly not what the researchers were doing!
They are looking at genetic diversity in populations.

Biologic

The authors seem to think they can conclude the Irish population significantly differs in it's make-up from others from the sequencing just one genome. Well that's plain too little data to be drawing conclusions on population make-up on.

Of course it differs. Anyone with leaving cert genetics knows an island population will be genetically distinct in some ways. If that was the aim of this project, it would have never made it through a funding proposal. The point of analysing genetic sequences is to deduce the traits that person will have at a phenotypic level (the characteristics they actually display). In order to do that, we need to know what they encode and how they interact. What good is it to simply have more data we don't understand?

You are off on a tangent about what the genes are coding for, that's not the issue here

You're priceless. The only function of genes is to code proteins, thats it! How can you separate the two? The only other reason to study genetic code is to characterise, based on some known genetic markers, what extent we as a population display certain disease related genes. What good is this without knowing the basis for the disease pathology? At best it will tell us "the Irish are 10% more likely to inherit cystic fibrosis", ie: what we already know from disease prevalence. Thus, I'll refer you back to my original post.

maninasia

You don't need to lecture me, in this regard I know my stuff believe me. It was certainly not assured that there was a large genetic difference between the people in Ireland and in the UK for example. There are hints but nothing concrete up to now. There are many questions to be answered and one sequence is not good enough as a dataset (even if they claim it was chosen on a pre-screening basis). You'd need to takes 1000s of samples from all over Ireland to begin to get a picture. Obviously it was more to be the first to say they sequenced somebody from Ireland and to show they have the capability to do that.

As for the other things you are on about, it's also pretty useless to contribute to the knowledge of diseases in Ireland...one dataset...not enough.

tallaght01

To be fair, its' still a very exciting development. Pissing on chips aside, it's the first step in some very interesting science.

maninasia

It IS exciting and a good first step, I agree. I too am very interested to see the data on the genetic make-up of people from different parts of Ireland and how it plays into inherited diseases and also gives us an insight into heritage.

bleg

tallaght01 wrote: »

To be fair, its' still a very exciting development. Pissing on chips aside, it's the first step in some very interesting science.

My poor thread, I had started it with so much hope.

Tree

Also, (having only read the newscientist bit on it), it appears they did some screening study to ensure this guy might be a fair representative sample. You can screen a whole host of markers without properly doing the genome, to make a fair estimate of what might be common.