People and Genetics

Meet Craig Venter

John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1846), is an American biologist

and entrepreneur. He is known for being one of the first to sequence the

human genome and for creating the first cell with a synthetic genome.

Venter founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research

(TIGR) and the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), and is now working at

JCVI to create synthetic biological organisms. He was listed on Time

magazine’s 2007 and 2008 Time 100 list of the most influential people

in the world. In 2010, the British magazine New Statesman listed Craig

Venter at 14th in the list of “The World’s 50 Most Influential Figures

2010”. He is a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival’s

Advisory Board.

Our Genes are not our Fate“One way to change our genes is to make new ones, as Craig Venter has so elegantly shown. Another is to change our lifestyle” says Dean Ornish on TED TALKS. Change your lifestyle, eat healthy food and avoid the usual suspects like saturated fat and sugar, nicotine, opiates, too much alcohol and chronic stress. You age less quickly, you can reverse diseases.

FIND IN THIS ISSUE:

ARE GENES OUR FATE?WHO IS CRAIG VENTER?WHAT ARE GENES?

Are you interested to find out more? Watch us at www.tedtalks.com

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1

A life Decoded by Craig Venter

Dean Ornish: Well, our genes are not our fate!

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PUBLIC SCHOOL # 18

NOVEMBER 2013

What are Genes?Your body is made up of 50 trillion cells. Cells come in many different varieties with many different functions. But inside almost every cell is a nucleus containing ninety-nine point nine percent of your genes and mitochondria containing a few more genes although you have nearly 20,000 genes. Your genes are a small part of a long molecule called DNA deoxyribo nucleic acid if you lined up all of the DNA containing all of your genes it would major 6 feet long but it coils so tightly that it fits in just one cell nucleus. DNA is a double-stranded molecule composed of sugar phosphate and four different bases adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine. This bases spell out the language known as the genetic code the number and order of this bases determined for example whether you are a chimp, a caw, a banana or a human.

People and GeneticsVOLUME 1 ISSUE 1NOVEMBER 2013

Scientific Discoveries

Venter learned of a technique for rapidly identifying all of the mRNAs present in a cell and began to use it to identify human brain genes. The short cDNA sequence fragments discovered by this method are called expresses sequence tags (ESTs), a name coined by Anthony Kerlavage at The Institute for Genomic Research. The NIH initially led an effort to patent these gene fragments, in which Venter coincidentally and controversially became involved. The NIH later withdrew the patent applications, following public outcry. Subsequent court cases declared that ESTs were not directly patentable.

In 2000, Venter and Francis Collins of the National Institute of Health and US Public Genome Project jointly made the announcement of the mapping of the human genome, a full three years ahead of the expected end of the Public Genome Program.

The announcement was made along with US President Bill Clinton, and U.K Prime Minister Tony Blair. Venter and Collins thus shared an award for "Biography of the Year" from A&E Network. On the 15 February 2001, the Human Genome Project consortium published the first Human Genome in the journal Nature, and was followed, one day later, by a Celera publication in Science. Despite some claims that shotgun sequencing was in some ways less accurate than the clone-by-clone method chosen by the Human Genome Project, the technique became widely accepted by the scientific community and is still the de facto standard used today.

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PUBLIC SCHOOL # 18

. DNA is a double-stranded molecule composed of sugar phosphate and four different bases adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine of the gene.

What Do We Share With Other Species?

Different species have different numbers but chromosomes humans usually have 46 chromosomes 2sets of 23 or simply 23 pairs of chromosome. Chimpanzees have 2 sets of 24 or 24 pairs of chromosomes. Rhesus monkeys have 21 pairs of chromosomes. Caws have 30 pairs of chromosomes. Chickens- 39 pairs of chromosomes. Fruit flies have pairs of chromosomes and bananas have 11 pairs of chromosomes.

So, what percentage of the DNA in your chromosomes do you share with other species? You share ninety-three percent of your DNA with rhesus monkey and ninety-eight .5 percent with our friend chimpanzee. How about with the other humans? 99 .5 percent so what makes us different from one another well one thing SNPs.