Via Villainous Company, comes this article which says that everything we thought we knew about genetics was wrong.
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.
It was bound to happen. All those people delighted that we aren't unique are going to have to find something new to gloat about, I suppose, because we're a lot more complicated than they were giving us credit for.
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.
That's amusing to me, since I've known for years that I'm just like my dad, and I bet a lot of other women have thought the same thing.
Unfortunately, the research has a darker side.
It suggests that some medical tests --such as prenatal scans -- may have incorrectly flagged these kinds of genetic quirks as signs of potential defects).
Remember (how can anyone forget) the abortion discussion that's been going on (and on and on and on) for the last week or so? The one that discussed this study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute which included a table of reasons women get abortions? "Possible problems affecting the fetus" was a reason given by 13 women. What if those women had depended on the type of prenatal exams that "may have incorrectly flagged these kinds of genetic quirks as signs of potential defects"? That seems rather problematic to me.
Now granted, the number of women who cited fetal abnormalities as their reason for having an abortion was quite small by comparison with, say, the women who said they were unmarried (42), the number one reason given. But still, wouldn't even one child have been worth it? Probably not to pro-choicers.
Each time I was pregnant, they asked me if I wanted to do these prenatal scans. Each time, I told them "no," not because the results wouldn't have been informative in some way, but because the information wouldn't have changed my mind. I have to wonder how many women chose abortion on the basis of these tests. Now that's sad.
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