New Direction For Genetics?

[MelT]

Study turns human genetics on its head

Research finds abnormal is really normal, puts in question some medical tests

CAROLYN ABRAHAM
Globe and Mail
Nov 23, 2006

It was nice while it lasted. But the idea that all the world's people
are 99.9 per cent genetically identical -- that a mere sliver of DNA
separates a Dolly Parton from a Dalai Lama -- is untrue.

An international research team has overturned the harmonious message
that flowed from the Human Genome Project in 2000 and discovered more
DNA differences exist among people than the experts expected.

Using new technology to study the genomes of 270 volunteers from four
corners of the world, researchers have found that while people do
indeed inherit one chromosome from each parent, they do not
necessarily inherit one gene from mom and another from dad.

One parent can pass down to a child three or more copies of a single
gene. In some cases, people can inherit as many as eight or 10
copies.In rare instances a person might be missing a gene.

Yet despite these anomalies, they still appear to be healthy --
countering the notion of what doctors have deemed "normal" in
genetics.

The work highlights how DNA helps to make each human unique, hinting
that a towering basketball player, for example, might boast extra
copies of a growth gene or that a daughter really might be more like
her dad.

But the landmark report, published today by the journal Nature, also
has disturbing implications.

It suggests that some medical tests --such as prenatal scans -- may
have incorrectly flagged these kinds of genetic quirks as signs of
potential defects).

However, it also makes clear that scientists have missed clues to the
kinds of genetic traits that can underpin disease.

"The genome is like an accordion that can stretch or shrink . . . so
you have no idea what's normal," said Steve Scherer, a senior
scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and study
co-author.

Even the number of genes people can inherit, he said, a premise set
out 150 years ago by Austrian monk Gregor Mendel, the father of
modern genetics, has been upended.

"We have to think of genetics in an entirely different way. We're
actually more like a patchwork of genetic code than bar codes that
line up evenly," Dr. Scherer said. "Everything we've been taught is
different now."

The Sick Kids team worked on the project for more than two years with
scientists at Harvard Medical School, the Wellcome Trust Sanger
Institute in England, the University of Tokyo and the
California-based Affymetrix Corp.

Their research finds that the size of at least 12 per cent of the
genome -- including 2,900 genes and regions between them -- can
differ dramatically between people, and in some cases, between
certain ethnic groups.

The size differences are the result of DNA that is either duplicated
or deleted or contains unexpected added bits of genetic code.
Scientists call the phenomenon "copy number variation" or CNV for
short. And it is already reshaping genetic research.

"When we're accounting for what the human genome means, there's not
going to be a single human genome map that is going to be useful to
one person," said Robert Hegele, a noted genetic scientist at the
Robarts Research Institute in London, Ont., who read the study. "It's
a huge surprise that there's so much variation of this type . . .
that is so common in so many healthy people."

For this reason, scientists agree that doctors looking at
less-detailed genetic tests -- such as karyotyping -- might have
mistaken unusually-sized bits of DNA as signs of a medical problem.

Patients, or prospective parents receiving results of a prenatal
test, for instance, might have been informed that something looked
abnormal when, the new work suggests, it isn't.

While the report does not delve into the issue directly, Dr. Scherer
acknowledged this is a possibility. He offered as an example a
genetic test that relies on a "diagnostic probe" to evaluate the
length of DNA code near the ends of chromosomes.

Shorter chromosomes, he said, are implicated in developmental delay
or mental retardation due to DNA code that might be missing.

"But we found that in a large number of cases (shorter chromosomes)
exist in the general population," said Dr. Scherer, who is also
director of the Centre for Applied Genomics. "The chromosomes don't
necessarily line up evenly . . . so people really need to scrutinize
these results more closely before assuming it's pathogenic.

"The bottom line is that there's so much natural variation you have
to go back and look closer."

Dr. Hegele agreed that such things might have been misread. "It's
always been assumed those big changes would result in some type of
disease, that they were rare and would lead to sort of catastrophic
conditions," he said, noting that Down syndrome is the result of an
extra copy of chromosome 21.

"But you're always dealing with clinical uncertainties and the best
knowledge that's available at the time."

Human DNA is a chemical code of roughly three billion letters. These
letters, A, C, G and T, are nucleotides that can spell out the recipe
for a gene. Previously, scientists have paid almost exclusive
attention to mutations that involved a single letter change in the
recipe -- an A, where others carry a T -- a so-called SNiP. But the
new report shows that a gene recipe, like any recipe, can also change
if quantities of an ingredient are much larger or missing.

Dr. Hegele, an endocrinologist who has been studying the genes of
patients with a family history of high cholesterol said, "We assume
there are normal numbers of copies [of genes] there when we're
looking at their code. But in fact, it could be that one [gene] is
totally missing."

Scientists suspect that evolutionary pressures likely triggered some
genes and DNA regions to increase in one part of the world, yet
wither in another.

The international consortium found that a gene already known to be
involved in HIV susceptibility, for example, is carried in higher
numbers in the DNA samples from Africa, where HIV rates dwarf those
in other parts of the world.

In total, the report found that about 15 per cent of the 2,000
disease-related genes known can be affected by such a variation.

Researchers conducted the study using the 270 DNA samples and health
information that had been collected for the Haplotype Map. That map,
completed last fall, was the first catalogue of common genetic
differences -- SNiPs -- between four major ethnic groups, the Han
Chinese, the Japanese, U.S. citizens of European descent and the
Yoruba tribe of Nigeria.

The Haplotype Map, like the 2000 Human Genome Map, suggested there
were few differences between these groups of people, with only rare
examples of mutations that appeared only in one population.

The new work suggests the differences could be slightly more
pronounced, largely because researchers had access to new technology
that changed the vantage point of the genome.

Using a microchip developed by Affymetrix, Dr. Scherer explained that
they were able to view the genome in chunks as small as 1,000
nucleotides, but still be able to pull back and see as many as five
million. He compared it to a telescope that allows you to home in and
see a single sun and its neighbouring planet, but that also has to
the power to zoom out and reveal the wider solar system and "find out
there are two suns."

Tom Hudson, who led Canada's contribution to the Haplotype Map,
applauded the new work, calling it a "a tool that will be immediately
useful." He said he is using it to reanalyze the genomes of 1,200
people with colon cancer and compare them to 1,200 people without it.

"In the early years it's going to be hard to interpret," said Dr.
Hudson, who is also the scientific director of the Ontario Institute
for Cancer Research. "We are going to see things and want to conclude
that this is possibly what makes people sick, but it may not be."

Glossary of genetics

The human genome: All of the genetic information carried inside a cell.

DNA: Deoxyribonucleic acid is the chemical code that provides the
genetic instructions to build and operate a human being. It is wound
like a spiralling ladder into the 23 pairs of chromosomes found in
the nucleus of our cells. There are about three billion rungs on the
ladder.

Chromosomes: The rod-shaped structures inside our cells made up of DNA.

They house genes along their length like box cars on a train. People
inherit 46 chromosomes from their parents, 23 from the mother and 23
from the father.

Genes: The essential units of heredity. Each gene encodes a recipe to
make a protein and proteins make the stuff that help to make us human
-- lips, liver, the frontal lobes of our brains.

Humans carry about 30,000 genes. They make up only about 3 per cent
of the genome. It was thought people inherit only two copies of a
gene, one from each parent. But the new work shows this can vary. A
person can, in some cases, inherit as many as 10 copies or none at
all.

Nucleotides: These chemicals are the building blocks of DNA. They are
represented by the letters A, C, G and T -- A stands for adenine, C
for cytosine, G for guanine and T for thymine. One letter is found at
the end of each rung on the ladder that makes up DNA. This way A
joins to T and C to G. The partnering is called a base pair.

The letters, or nucleotides, can combine to spell out the recipe for
a gene, or a protein.

Junk DNA: This refers to the 97 per cent of genetic code in DNA that
does not encode the recipe for a gene. These long stretches of code
are now thought to be linked to regulating genes.

SNiPs: The mutation type best known in human DNA. It stands for
"single nucleotide polymorphism" and refers to a single-letter change
in the DNA code, a T where others carry a C, for example.

-- Carolyn Abraham

MelT

[MelT]

I found this article about the above at the same place. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but it's very interesting. He omits to mention that white cells in our own blood are live, independant organisms too. Also, although you might think of white cells as beng one kind of 'creature', they in fact come in 6 completely different families, each very different. We live in very close co-dependence with a number of bacteria and organisms in our bodies. We'd die very quickly if you removed the 'non-human' parts of ourselves.


MelT

The Discovery of DNA Variability, Holographic Blueprints and the Symphony of Life
by Mike Adams, NewsTarget.com, Nov 23, 2006
Announced with great fanfare in late November, 2006, scientists have discovered that human DNA is far more variable than previously thought. Contrary to previous beliefs, as much as 10 percent of human genes vary wildly from one person to the next. The mainstream press is hailing the discovery and some sort of breakthrough that will shed light on so-called "incurable" diseases and give researchers the ability to create more targeted medicines. (There's always a pro-Pharma slant in the mainstream media isn't there?) In reality, this new DNA discovery explains why most pharmaceuticals don't work for most people.

More importantly, this discovery humbles us, and shows us that even our top scientists know less about human DNA than they once thought. Researching DNA is a lot like researching astronomy: the more we learn, the less we realize we know. It's as if every newly discovered fact unveils the existence of ten new questions we never knew existed.

The mainstream media, in its usual limited view, is reporting this discovery as a breakthrough that will help scientists develop new drugs to treat disease. Every "Eureka!" moment having anything to do with the genetic code seems to lead the mainstream media to the same advertiser-pleasing conclusion, but they haven't even begun to realize the big story here. The real news in this discovery, you see, has nothing to do with pharmaceuticals or even medical science. It is larger and more profound than any of us could have possibly imagined.

Allow me to explain...


Where are all the missing blueprints?

Until today, it was widely believed that individual genes directly controlled physical traits in the human body (and even mental and behavioral traits, according to some), but now it turns out that a surprisingly large number of individuals have wild variations in their genetic code, such as multiple copies of the same gene or even entire genes that are missing from their DNA. And yet they're not walking around without a kidney, for example, or missing their left eyeball.


DNA


It's all quite shocking and rather difficult to explain from a Western point of view where scientists believe that DNA is like a computer program containing sequential instructions for building a physical organism. Truth is, there aren't enough genes in the human genome to even build a human being in the first place. A human has about 30,000 genes, yet an adult human has trillions of specialized cells governed by millions of different chemical reactions. How do 30,000 genes control all this?

Only a few years ago (2001), humans were believed to have 100,000 genes while all simple life forms contained far fewer. But this assumption of humans being some "advanced" life form turned out to be utterly false. It turns out that the mustard weed contains the same number of genes as humans, and even the common mouse has nearly as many. From certain types of worms to common trees, there are many organisms on the planet that have very nearly the same number of genes as human beings (and some have more).

Even more surprising to most, human beings appear to actually be human-bacteria hybrids. We are not all human, in other words. At least 200 genes in our genetic code were mysteriously borrowed from bacteria, we now know. Nobody is sure how they got there (did early humans mate with bacteria? Odd...), but we are sure that they exist.

Furthermore, if you look at the composition of cells in the typical human body, and you start counting them all, you realize that most of the cells in the typical human body are not human. Read that again, if you need to. It's a shocking statement, but it's entirely true. The vast majority of cells contained in the human body are bacteria cells -- about 100 trillion of them for a typical human being.

In other words, when you walk around, most of the cells you're carrying with you are not even you. The importance of this is in understanding that the human organism does not exist in isolation to the world around it. Regardless of what we believe, we are all closer to nature than we think. In fact, we are literally living with nature inside us, permeating our cells and accounting for more of us than us ourselves.[1]


Epigenetic factors

There's also no mention of epigenetics in all this news about the human genome. As recently understood -- to the great surprise of the hard science community, no doubt -- epigenetic factors control the expression of genes, activating or deactivating them based on environmental factors such as nutrition or exposure to synthetic chemicals.

Epigenetic factors are inherited, too, and passed from one generation to the next, meaning that if one woman suffers from chronic nutritional deficiencies when she conceives a child, the detrimental side effects of that nutritional deficiency will be passed down through multiple generations (at least four generations, according to Pottenger, but perhaps as many as seven according to others).

So DNA is not the only archive of information that's passed from mother to child. Even if we understood everything about DNA, we would still lack the big picture unless we also understood epigenetic factors -- and most old-school researchers and Western scientists don't even believe in epigenetic factors, adhering to the outdated point of view that genes alone control everything, and that all disease is predetermined, with environmental factors having little or no effect.


The human genome reflects the patterns of nature

Most Western scientists currently believe the human genome is sort of like a biological computer program; a series of instructions that tells the cells how to construct a complete organism containing trillions of new cells. Of course, there's no real explanation as to how a mere 30,000 genes could oversee the construction, maintenance and operation of such a highly complex organism. As Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, said, "It's astounding that we get by with so few protein-coding genes, but that seems to be sufficient because here we all are." It's hard to argue with logic like that.

Indeed, it does work. But not in the way Western scientists believe. My own personal theory of the human genome takes special note of the multiple copies of many genes that have now been observed across a wide spectrum of the human population. Some people carry one, two, three or even four copies of the same gene.

If you look around in nature, where else do you notice copies of the same information? In harmonics, of course. A complex sound such as a single note on a violin is not made up of a simple square wave tone, it's made up of highly complex harmonics which give the violin its own tone and timbre, a sort of auditory personality. On an oscilloscope, these often appear as copies of the same underlying waveforms.

They're also called "overtones," and they're present throughout the human experience. Simple saying the word, "we," for example, involves shaping the mouth and tongue into an arrangement that creates complex, high-frequency overtones. The "ee" sound is the highest multi-frequency overtone sound created in human speech, but every vowel sound has its own unique pattern of repeating information. From low to high, it's "uuu" "ooo" "aaah" "eh" "eee."

Physically, a human being is more like musical expression than a set of construction blueprints. The human body has near-perfect symmetry and economies of expression through fractal geometry that are quite evident in the structure of the circulatory system, for example, or the nervous system. Just look at a drawing of veins and arteries and you'll notice the fractal patterns of geometry -- the same patterns you'll see drawn in the underside of a leaf, by the way.

The same is also true with human hair and skin cells. Every police detective knows that the human fingerprint is made up of readily identifiable patterns that are connected through a sort of biological artistry. In any human fingerprint, you'll notice the loops, swishes and curves that give strong clues to the underlying fractal geometry. Fingerprints aren't built with cellular bricks, they're built with repeating patterns that give us strong clues about the true structure of our DNA.

(Fractal geometry is also the dominant form of physical structure in nature, by the way. In fact, it was the study of plant leaves and mollusk shells that led to the discovery of fractal geometry.)

Throughout the human body, from the lining of the cells of the stomach to the structure of the eye, you find patterns that go way beyond mere construction blueprints. The human body is a symphony, a grand musical masterpiece played out in billions of variations across the planet.

And the DNA, in my view, is a holographic reflection of the whole being. The repeating patterns of genes and the symmetry of the double helix are all expressions of music. The human genome is a symphony, and it is through this symphony that we play the music of life. Combined with environmental factors and energetic factors (such as parental love), the symphony of human DNA creates a physical being. But it doesn't stop there. It also helps create the framework for an emotional being, an energetic being and a spiritual being.

Some scientists see nothing but cold, hard construction blueprints in that DNA. Others see God in the symphony, or Mother Nature directing the orchestra. What I see is a miracle of life, created with such masterful poetry and music that it is something to behold, to honor and to be humbled by. It is the ultimate statement of our connection to nature, for everywhere you look in nature, you see the same patterns we express, carried out in a range of melodies through the plants, animals and even the waters and skies. Looking closely at ourselves, we cannot help but notice nature. If we are keen observers, that is.


Western scientists refuse to hear the music

For Western scientists to think they've figured out the Human Genome, and that they can now use it to design new synthetic drugs that hijack the biochemical orchestra of the human body, is the epitome of medical arrogance. They refuse to recognize the miracle of human life, believing instead in the superiority of Man over nature. They would destroy a thousand symphonies to sell another million dollars worth of pharmaceuticals. Every day, they pad their fragile egos with "heroic" surgical procedures and organ transplants that grind the orchestra to a halt.

They are the music stoppers, the nature deniers... the rationalists. They believe all things are compartmentalized and separated. There is no connection between living things, according to the rationalists, and living creatures are nothing more than players in some cruel game called survival of the fittest.

But I say we are all unique, creative expressions of the same universal tune. Even our very blueprint -- our DNA -- is a symphony of expression that will never be understood until researchers start to think holographically rather than sequentially. DNA is a wonderful mystery, as is any good symphony, or novel, or collection of poetry. And just as a novel is more than the sum of its words, a human being is more than the accounting of her DNA. Let me give you a simple example to make this all more apparent.

In the paragraph below, each word represents a gene. What is this paragraph trying to say?

a, a, a, above, air, all, almost, alone, and, and, and, anywhere, as, breadth, brought, by, cluster, color, combining, crate, crooked, dropped, evening, fine, first-water, follow, freedom, from, glossy, greater, hair, hazy, i, i, image, in, in, in, in, it, it, it, it, it, i've, i've, i've, jewel, later, little, luster, might, moon, moon, new, of, of, of, of, on, one, one, or, ornament, over, please, pulled, put, run, seen, shining, shining, slowly, some, sorts, start, the, the, the, the, the, the, tilted, tree-and-farmhouse, trees, tried, tried, try, walking, wallow, water, with, with, wonder, you, your.

Presented as such, it seems to be nonsense, right? This is the Western view of the human genome, where each "word" (or gene) stands on its own, existing in some isolated way for the purpose of governing the construction of some correlated physical structure. Western scientists even use the term, "words" to describe genes, and they describe the variation in the protein sequences as different "spellings" of those words. Yet they completely miss the grammar of those words: the music, the poetry, the linguistics.

So let's take those same words (genes) and rearrange them to create music. Or poetry, as it were, thanks to Robert Frost:


The Freedom of the Moon

I've tried the new moon tilted in the air
Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster
As you might try a jewel in your hair.
I've tried it fine with little breadth of luster,
Alone, or in one ornament combining
With one first-water start almost shining.

I put it shining anywhere I please.
By walking slowly on some evening later,
I've pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,
And brought it over glossy water, greater,
And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,
The color run, all sorts of wonder follow.

Do you see the difference? They are the same words as the nonsense paragraph shown earlier, but now suddenly the words create something far more complex and intelligent than the sum of their parts. Through the arrangement of the words, or the symphony of words, Robert Frost takes us on a journey that touches on the human experience, our relationship with nature and the meaning of life itself. All this has been brought forth by a set of words that seemed meaningless when read in isolated, absent the context of their interrelationships (or holographic relationships).

DNA is poetry, you see. And as long as Western scientists continue to look at genes in isolation, they will only see a scramble of isolated words whose meaning remains forever elusive. But genuine, curious scientists who are true enough to their own hearts to take a leap of faith at believing in the symphony of nature will find something far different in human DNA. They will find poetry, symmetry, harmonics... and a song of life that, if truly understood, would humble even the most brilliant among us.

You see, this year's discovery of widespread variability in the genetic code -- and gene copies, and missing genes -- is not something to be viewed as a way to sell more drugs. That view is childish. It is insulting to nature herself. This discovery is far more profound. It gives us an important clue that can help humankind remember where it came from. It reminds us that we are part of nature, not its conquerors or masters. We are, in fact, an expression of the very phenomena we are attempting to understand, and if we read the poetry of DNA correctly, we will realize that life itself is not about the accumulation of wealth, or stuff, or power over others, but rather the discovery of self.

And "self" does not exist in isolation. We are, in every way imaginable, intertwined. We are all made of the same stuff, wrought from the same patterns of nature, and in fact, formulated from the same musical notes played out in five billion unique but compatible tunes. With this discovery, Western science has concluded we are all more different from each other than previously thought, but I believe it is evidence that we are all just unique verses of the same universal poem.

By the way, if you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy a free report I've authored entitled, How to End Cruelty to Animals, People and Nature. - Mike

Footnote:

"Infinite Love is the Only Truth - Everything Else is Illusion", by David Icke

[1] A very interesting reference to this subject is the work of David Icke. Long before the "establishment" concluded any of the above, he covered it in his research. I highly recommend his newest book: "Infinite Love is the Only Truth - Everything Else is Illusion", Wes Penre, www.illuminati-news.com.


Source: http://www.newstarget.com/021175.html