Kuwait is changing the playing field. In early July, just days after the June 26th deadly Imam Sadiq mosque bombing claimed by ISIS, Kuwait ruled to instate mandatory DNA-testing for all permanent residents. This is the first use of DNA testing at the national-level for security reasons, specifically as a counter-terrorism measure. An initial $400 million dollars is set aside for collecting the DNA profiles of all 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents
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NHS England is creating 11 Genomic Medicine Centres designed to deliver its ambitious 100,000 Genomes Project. In the broader sense it is an undeniable sign that genomics is poised to transform human medicine by improving the efficacy of medical diagnosis and personalized treatment.
This is a major step in the implementation of the Genomics England initiative, which offers a high profile glimpse of a future in which it becomes commonplace to use genomic information to improve our lives – starting with our health. Located in major city hospitals from Newcastle to Manchester to Cambridge to London, these centres will collect samples from patients suffering from cancers and rare diseases and put the United Kingdom at the forefront of genomic medicine.
From each donated sample, taken with due diligence and promised anonymity, will come invaluable medical information married to genomic data. The complete data set will build a lasting knowledge legacy for future generations and is ideally just the start of what will come to be known as the ‘practical genomic revolution’.
Sampling 100,000 people is still only a tiny proportion of England’s 53 million inhabitants, but it means anyone living in this country will be far more likely to know someone who has contributed their genome to science in the hopes of helping humanity and eventually themselves.
Perhaps you have already entered the world of DNA self-study?
Completed in 2003, the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of the DNA double helix by Watson, Crick, Wilkins and Franklin, the Human Genome Project was the first “Big Science” project in biology. In only five decades, science has leapt from the discovery of the DNA helix to reading the entire human blueprint. In the last 12 years, ever-larger projects have followed, such as the 1000 and 10,000 genome projects, and the cost of sequencing a human genome plummeted to a level where the NHS can invest in a 100,000 Genomes Project as a crucial part of its strategy to protect and improve human health.
What might happen in the next five years? Where will we be by 2020?
As we enter the year 2015, few realize that it actually marks the 20th anniversary of the genomic revolution. It was in 1995 that Craig Venter, one of the leaders of the private human genome project and now founder of Human Longevity (a company working towards a million human genomes), and colleagues published the first complete genome sequence of a free-living organism – the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae. We now have the genomes of thousands of microbes and an array of species across the Tree of Life. Large-scale sequencing projects are taking off. This month alone saw announcements that the Smithsonian Institution will launch a virtual Biodiversity Genomics Institute on the back of its Global Genome Initiative, and Russia will create a DNA databank of every living thing by 2018.
The early signs of the coming ‘practical genomics revolution’ are growing more visible. Analysis of DNA is starting to impact us more directly. How many of us as individuals, or family units, have submitted our own DNA already for analysis of paternity, kinship, ancestry, or health? How many are even more ahead of the curve and ventured to submit samples to uBiome or the American Gut Project to look at gut microbes, our “second genome”? How many have checked the contents of food — is your hamburger really cow? Or used DNA information to breed animals, from dogs to cats to livestock, where the presence of the ‘pulled’ gene, which stops horns from developing in cattle is highly desirable?
Perhaps these scenarios are still far from common place, but they are certainly real.
The website DNA Testing Choice now holds a catalogue of hundreds of DNA testing options. The most famous, perhaps, 23andMe, a company that flew in the face of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and had its health-related genotyping services in the United States closed down in late 2013, is now open for business in the United Kingdom. Branded as a DNA ancestry company in the United States, it is now offering health-related reports in the UK-based arm of the company. The company advertised in late 2014 ‘what better Christmas gift to give than a genome?’ Pricing starts at £125.
The sequencing of large cohorts of humans and deeper research into the human microbiome, the trillions of microbes that live with us, will produce the science headlines of 2015 and beyond.
Will you or your loved ones have your genomes sequenced in 2015? Will you opt for participation in research projects that are opening their doors to the public or turn to the consumer genetic marketplace?
By 2020 society will likely look back on 2015 as a turning point in human history — the start of the ‘practical genomics revolution’.
Headline image credit: DNA. CC0 via Pixabay.
The post The practical genomics revolution appeared first on OUPblog.
Than you so much for all the excellent liar info yesterday. I’m now halfway through Paul Ekman’s Emotions Revealed: Recognising Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life and finding it extraordinarily useful. Thanks to Gwenda Bond, Jenny Davidson and Malcolm Tredinnick for suggesting him. I’ll be chasing down all the other leads as well. You are all the best research assistants ever!
Since you were all so amazingly helpful on yesterday’s research question I have another:
Last year (I think) I read at least two articles about DNA testing being used in a classroom (or possibly classrooms) in California (but I may have the state wrong) to demonstrate that no one is racially “pure” and, indeed, to promote discussion about what race even is. The test gives the percentage of your DNA that comes from Africa, Europe, Asia or Native America. And many people get results they’re not expecting. The correlation between your skin colour and your DNA is not straightforward.
I have googled any number of combinations and have found articles on DNA testing and race. Even on DNA testing being taught in the classroom, but not on DNA tests being used to talk about race in the classroom.
If any of you can help with this I will be eternally grateful.
Might the social networking site CafeScribe be the solution
Higher Ed publishers have been waiting for?
By Evan Schnittman
Last week Salt Lake City based social networking site CafeScribe visited our NY office to demonstrate their service and explain their business model. These kind of meetings happen all the time and I usually sit politely through a series of PowerPoint slides which show how Site X or Product Y appeals to a myriad of users who are in our target demographic, and how these users would love to have access to our content. When discussion of business models comes around, they are usually what I call “personal hovercraft business models” (i.e., this will start earning OUP and its author’s money when everyone is floating around on their own personal hovercraft.) (more…)
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I am pleased to introduce Corey Podolsky (bio at the bottom) who will, in the upcoming months, help us decipher some of the issues surrounding digital publishing and marketing. Corey is an Oxford insider but his opinions differ from Evan Schnittman’s. I think it is helpful to know that while we all work together at Oxford, we also all have different visions for the future. Check back tomorrow for Evan’s response.
Amway is famous for its viral business model, recruiting thousands (perhaps tens of thousands?) of people globally to sell its products, each joining as independent contractors tasked with selling products and expanding the sales force by receiving commissions from subsequent recruit’s sales. (more…)
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Oh, I have to go first again?!
I think the articles you might be remembering were tests conducted a couple of years in a row at Penn State University (as part of a Racial Relations class). At least, that was my memory of them and a quick Google around shows up a few dozen popular press articles on this, although I didn’t look long enough to find anything academic.
Was it the “DNA Test Gives Students Ethnic Shocks” article on this page?
Megan & Malcolm: I’m pretty sure the Penn State test is not what I’m remembering. The one thing I’m positive about is that it was a high school classroom, not a university.
you are doing very interesting research. you’ve got me curious!
i don’t know anything about this dna testing and race stuff, but i’d love to hear more.
this is totally random, but because you’re the (first) one who got me interested in this book…i got a copy of skin hunger today!!! i’m in the middle of another book, and then there will be the two sequels to read after that…but i’ll be reading it soon. i can’t wait!!
Dragonfly: Is serkrit. Top sekrit. But you’ll be able to read it September 2009. Unless I change my mind . . .
Enjoy Skin Hunger!
justine: i see you learned how to spell from mj. or did she learn from you??
september 2009. for my birthday! (oh my socks, i’ll be over 30.)
That spelling of secret pre-dates either one of us using it. I’m even pretty sure that spelling pre-dates LOLcats.
But, it is very likely she stole it from me. Since she has a tendency to do that. A lot.
Hmmm . . . I’m in California and haven’t heard about it in classrooms. However, l gave my husband a DNA test for his birthday last year. I got it from National Geographic online. They’re amassing a huge data base.
Like most, my white husband roots are in Africa.
What were his percentages?
Where on earth do you go to get your DNA tested?
(This preview-as-you-type feature is the best stuff on earth. :-D)
Camille, here’s where I got my husband’s DNA kit . . .
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/
It’s a really easy test to take. And then you mail it in and they send you the results.
Justine, I’ll ask him where he’s put the results and try to find out the percents.
I wanted one of those DNA testing things for my 16th B-Day, but my parents thought it was too expensive.
I go to school in California, and I haven’t heard about that either, albeit, my school is quite crappy and poor.
In my race and racism class in college we watched a film that showed high school students doing an experiment like that. Basically they discovered that a kid from Mexico’s closest genetic match was from Poland (arbitrary examples though). I don’t remember what the film was called, but it looked relatively old.
And I want to say that it sounds like something David Suzuki would have covered on The Nature of Things, but I might be wrong about that.
Hi Justine,
Check out the resources for teachers on the companion website to the PBS doc, African American Lives 2 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aalives/teachers/rationalizing_race.html
It also links to another PBS companion website, Race: The Power of Illusion.
http://www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_00-home.htm
Hope this is helpful. Ariel
hey justine, i hadn’t heard about this either, but the ladeez at racialicious would know if anyone would.
http://www.racialicious.com/
well, in my science class the teacher paid for three randomly selected kids to have their DNA tested and anylyzed (the test kits are not cheap) but we’re using the data to learn about DNA not race.
~Moose-la
Hey, Justine, pretty sure this isn’t what you remembered, because it’s recent, but here is a link to an article about a project at a St. Louis school:
http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080217/NEWS01/802170397
“As the results of the school’s “Discover Your Roots” project began to trickle in earlier this month, the 40 students and teachers participating in the human genome program began comparing notes the moment the school’s computers spit out the results of their DNA tests.”
Hope that helps, even if it wasn’t what you were looking for…
emily
Justine, sadly my Hubby can’t find his DNA test information. However, I can recall that he’s part European, part African, and part martian.
i’m not good at linking to stuff, but i went to google and put DNA+Race…and a bunch of stuff came up.