Genes, aminoacids, proteins, DNA…I want to integrate all this concepts in a coherent picture that will clearly explain the inner-workings of genetics and replace the blurred conceptualization I have as of right now, i.e., isolated knowledge of its basic concepts without fully assessing how they coalesce to provide the engineering blueprints required to develop a biological being?
I know this is pretty damn basic (sigh!), and believe me, I have searched for a cohesive, integral explanation but have found only islands of knowledge rather than the complete panorama of understanding I am aspiring to obtain. You don’t need to bother trying to explain this, a link to a simple, informative page that you already now of would work wonders!
BTW, any updates on how the Human Genome Project is progressing?
Had an actual sig been adhered to this post it would have been much nicer!
This may not be as comprehensive as you’d like, but it amuses me greatly that I could type in a Google search for “Genetics for Dummies” and actually get a hit.
There was a thread on this started 12/17/00, subject: RNA for Dummies. I don’t know how to link to it, but you can search for it and read it. It’s excellent.
…wasn’t the Genome project finished last march? I think first they projected it would take a wicked long time to decipher it, then this guy came up with his own way to get it done really quick and I think he finished it. So he’s copyrighting all the information he found out and is going to make big bucks selling it to research companies and whatnot.
Not positive about it being finished…but I just vaguely remember hearing that in my bio class last spring.
It’s not quite finished, about 98% or so, and the guy teamed up with the gvt. They cooperated and are cooperating to get it done. It’ll be a couple more years before it’s 100% done.
You’re talking about Craig Venter, who founded Celera to do the human genome. He only cooperated with the goverment (NIH) in the sense that he agreed to share the credit.
If anything, he lit a fire under NIH’s ass to complete the sequencing by proposing to do it faster by “shotgun” sequencing" and selling the data. Shotgunning was intially derided as being inaccurate and as an unfeasable way of sequencing a genome, but now it is accepted as valid.
AFAIK, Celera’s genome database might be more accurate than NIH’s, but it’s not free. There was a controversy recently about this. The journal Science published a paper that used Celera’s sequencing but the sequences weren’t made available, unlike sequences from NIH. Science is a prestigious journal, giving great weight to the research published in it, and researchers are upset that they don’t have the access to check claims that are made using the Celera database.
With any research published, you need to be able to satify yourself that it’s valid, and without all the info available, that might not be possible.
It’s true that Venter’s shotgun approach proved much more effective than NIH’s organized approach. But isn’t it true that he agreed to let NIH tag along and take part in his genome project, accelerating the process? I may be wrong, but IIRC, it was a little more than letting NIH take part of the credit.
I’d highly recommend The Cartoon Guide to Genetics. It’s an easy to understand and comprehensive book and it gave me a huge head start on my university Genetics course/
barbitu8–I might be wrong, but IIRC, it took President Clinton’s personal intervention just to get Venter and Francis Collins (the NIH director, I beleive) to stand in the same room together for a photo shoot annoucing the project’s near completion.
Celera and NIH have different databases and they ain’t sharing.
I think Time or Newsweek had something about this a few months ago.
