With apologies to Numbers 24:5, “How goodly are thy tents, Oh Jacob” — a recent paper shows how shockingly error ridden our genomes actually are [ Science vol. 337 pp. 64 – 69 ’12 ]. The authors sequenced roughly three quarters of the genes coding for proteins in some 2,439 people — e.g. 15,585 protein coding genes. This left 98% of the genome untouched, primarily because we really don’t know what it does or how it does it, despite the fact that it controls, when, where and how much of each protein is made. So they basically looked at the bricks from which we are built (the proteins) and not the plans (the 98%).
The news is not very good. The subjects came from two groups: 1,351 Europeans and 1,088 Africans (the latter, because genetic diversity is far higher among Africans as that’s where humanity arose, and where mutations have…
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oogenhand 