From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Mar 20 2002 - 01:39:51 MST
On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Technotranscendence wrote:
> Why not the genomes of organisms used in/for medical experiments?
They are already done and in the finishing process (e.g. mouse, rat)
or "allocated" to some set of genome centers (e.g. pig, chimp).
> This way, there can be an even tighter link between medical research and
> genomics.
Its already beyond that. People are doing double and triple knockouts
to determine gene function and have genes they can switch on and off
in specific tissues or in response to specific external signals to
test a hypothesis.
> Also, the genomes of organisms used for food or any human
> use, such as trees used for lumber.
The problem is this isn't the mission of the DOE. Though the
DOE has funded the sequencing of several organisms that can
digest cellulose and/or lignin. I think this is in the hope
less energy intensive methods for paper production might be
developed.
As someone pointed out there is a big debate brewing about the
open publication of the rice genome. I know there are perhaps
two or more other groups working on sequencing rice. Corn and
especially wheat will probably be postponed for a while because
they are really big genomes.
There is a big gap between a microbial genome of a few
megabases and higher level organisms that start at around
~500 MBP and go up to 10's of GBP. You can get a lot of
microbial genomes for the cost of a single higher level
organism genome.
> This might have manufacturing applications.
> (I'm talking about the ones that haven't been done yet.)
Yes, there are certainly some interesting manufacturing
applications. Surprisingly there is a big gap currently
between what we already have (more than 100 genomes) and
applications of that information. I think I've got until
March 28th to get my favorites list into the DOE, so if
anyone has any good ideas please let me know.
Robert
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