The Human Genome Map: The Death of Genetic Determinism and Beyond.

• Author: Ho, Mae-Wan

The complete human genome map was announced just before Valentine's day [1]. But it was an anticlimax for the proponents, despite much effort to keep up the hype. The scientists declared themselves "surprised" The "book of life" turns out to have as few as 30,000 genes. Craig Venter, whose company Celera raced the publicly funded sequencing consortium to the finishing line, was the only one to read the implications correctly. The number of genes is far less than needed to support the extravagant claims throughout the past decade that individual genes not only determine how our bodies are constructed, what diseases we suffer from, but also our patterns of behaviour, our intellectual ability, sexual preference and criminality.

Facts of Life [2]

1. The human genome has about 30,000 genes, twice as many as a fruitfly and 10,000 more than the simple roundworm.

2. There are only 300 unique genes in the human genome which are not in the mouse.

3. Forty percent of the genes were previously unknown.

4. 113 genes have been transferred into the human genome from bacteria.

5. There is no genetic basis for race; humans all over the world share 99.9% of their DNA.

6. The "complete" sequence is still riddled with gaps.

7. The fugu fish has the most concise genome; it has no "junk" DNA.

8. More than 95% of the human genome is "junk" DNA.

9. The coding regions for proteins occupy only 1.1% of the human genome.

10. About 50% of the human genome are proviral sequences and transposable elements, many with reverse transcriptase.

11. One of the most common transposable element, Alu, tends to cluster where there are genes.

    1. Chromosomes vary widely in the number of genes they contain.

13. Most mutations occur in males.

14. There are 250,000 proteins made by the 30,000 genes.

15. The dog is 85% identical to a human in terms of genetic sequence and many of the 380 inherited diseases in dogs are similar to those in humans.

16. There are more than four million genetic differences between humans found so far.

17. 1,778 genes have been identified with diseases so far, from asthma to Alzheimer' s

    "We simply do not have enough genes for this idea of biological determinism to be right," said Venter. "The wonderful diversity of the human species is not hard-wired in our genetic code. Our environments are critical." Many of us were saying the same decades before the idea for the human genome project had ever been conceived of.

    John Sulston, Head of the Sanger Centre in Cambridge in the public consortium, attempts to save face by appealing to "executive" genes that do very sophisticated "management" work. "What we are doing is to increase the variety and subtlety of genes that control other genes." [2] But that only leads us into the infinite regress of having to postulate genes that control genes that control yet other genes...