TAI Alert #6 - Genomic Fundamentals Shattered

Friend Ursula Freer sent me the following the day before yesterday:

"Evidence of a networked genome shatters the scientific basis for virtually every official risk assessment of today's commercial biotech products, from genetically engineered crops to pharmaceuticals."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/03/
business/biotech.php

This rather amazing news highlights the herd-mentality of science, where a single proposal (or interpretation) is taken for gospel and everything downstream is built upon the assumption of validity of the earlier work. Very few individuals have the courage to question the fundamentals.

I am reminded of a conversation with our board member, Dr. David Martin, some nine months ago when he opined that “the lack of evaluating genes in situ and, instead, stretching and unfolding them is why we think there's so much "useless" code. Cross link communication of fold interfaces is reproduced and contains vital information”. In other words, most of the intelligence of DNA relates not just to adjacent sequential relationships, but to three-dimensional, far more complex interactions.

This much more complex perspective of the genome system will someday help us to side-step extraordinary problems like this one with rice, chronicled in FORTUNE.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/07/09/100122123/index.htm

John L. Petersen