Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and former leader of the now-completed Human Genome Project \u00a0\u00a0(Official NIH portrait, in the public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eric Metaxas, Life, God, and Other Small Topics: Conversations from Socrates in the City<\/em> (New York: Plume\/Penguin, 2011) includes the transcript of a 3 December 2008 New York City speech (\u201cThe Language of God: A Believer Looks at the Human Genome\u201d) by the physician and geneticist Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D, who was, at the time, between his assignment as leader of the Human Genome Project and his subsequent appointment by President Barack Obama as the director of the National Institutes of Health, a position that he still holds today. \u00a0Here is a passage from that transcript:<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, what is the genome anyway? \u00a0The genome is made of DNA, and it really is an instruction book \u2014 that\u2019s a pretty good metaphor. . . .<\/span><\/p>\nAll of the DNA of an organism is its genome. \u00a0The information is encoded within a double helix for which Watson and Crick figured out the structure back in 1953, when I was three years old. \u00a0Basically, the way DNA carries information is by the series of chemical bases that are abbreviated A<\/em>, C<\/em>. G<\/em>, and T<\/em>. \u00a0It\u2019s the order of those letters, those chemical bases, that carries out the information that then gets passed from parent to child down through the generations.<\/span><\/p>\nSuppose you had to guess, assuming you didn\u2019t know the answer, how many of those letters of the instruction book it would take to specify the biological properties of a human being? \u00a0What number would you guess? \u00a0It can\u2019t be infinite. \u00a0You have to have this information inside each cell of your body. \u00a0Every time the cell divides, it\u2019s got to copy the whole thing; so, you wouldn\u2019t want it to be larger than it had to be, at least, not by much.<\/span><\/p>\nThe answer is about three billion. \u00a0Now, three billion is a big number. \u00a0Even in Washington, it\u2019s a big number, although some might debate that. \u00a0It\u2019s hard to think about that number and the fact that you have that inside each cell of your body. \u00a0If we decided right now, because this is a special evening and this is Socrates in the City, that we should read the human genome, what do you think? \u00a0Sure, we can do that. \u00a0I\u2019ll start over here, and you can start reading\u00a0A<\/em>, C<\/em>,\u00a0G<\/em>,\u00a0T<\/em>, T<\/em>, G<\/em>, C<\/em>, T<\/em>, and so on, and when you get tired, you can pass it to the next person and we\u2019ll just keep going until we\u2019re done.<\/span><\/p>\nYou wouldn\u2019t mind that, right? \u00a0That would be memorable. \u00a0But you might not survive, because for seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, we would be at this task for thirty-one years, and then we\u2019d finally be done. \u00a0You have that information inside each cell of your body, which is just a phenomenal thing to contemplate, and you got that from your parents. \u00a0(304-305)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Eric Metaxas, Life, God, and Other Small Topics: Conversations from Socrates in the City (New York: Plume\/Penguin, 2011) includes the transcript of a 3 December 2008 New York City speech (\u201cThe Language of God: A Believer Looks at the Human Genome\u201d) by the physician and geneticist Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D, who was, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>