Stepping into a doctor’s office can be frightening for some people, especially if it is always preceded by the ominous phrase that begins with two words: You. Have.
With recent developments in genetic technology, it is now possible for people to get their genes tested for a wide selection of personal idiosyncrasies ranging from diseases to unique personality traits.
That does not necessarily mean that such scientific advances are exempt from
controversy, however.
To address these advancements and some of the ethical issues raised by this new technology, the University’s Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology hosted a talk by Lee Silver, a Princeton University professor of molecular biology and public affairs who spoke about the commodification of genome sequencing technology and its potential benefits outside of the scientific community.
“We’re calling it this genomics revolution,” said Bryn Gaertner, the Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology’s ASUO representative.
“You learn so much about the biology of individuals than we have in the past 100 or 1,000 years, but there seems to be a disconnect between what scientists and biologists are able to do and what people are aware of what we’re able to do. A lot of this technology is being developed at the University of Oregon, so we wanted to be able to showcase what scientists at the University of Oregon are doing and what scientists in general are doing with this
genomic information.”
Silver explained that genes are essentially files of digital information that are represented in a specific ordering or sequence of a series of letters along the DNA molecule — these sequences comprise a specifically arranged order of four specific chemicals: adenosine, guanine, cytosine and thymine.
Despite the fact that people and other mammals have physical differences, Silver explained that everything and everyone is inextricably linked through the similarities in their DNA.
In all, Silver said the human genome is nearly 3 billion letters long but that nearly all human genome sequences are 99.95 percent the same.
The remaining 0.05 percent of genes that separate two people from each other translates into nearly 1.5 million total differences in genome arrangements.
It is these human genome differences that can determine biological traits such as bitter taste perception, eye color, hair color, lactose intolerance and smoking behaviors.
As a result, companies such as 23andme.com and decodeme.com have commodified the technology by offering their services to the general public in which normal people can get their genetic information analyzed to identify risk factors for certain diseases, genetic disorders and other types of services.
Another website called chemistry.com even acts as a match making site where people can have their genetic information screened to identify their likelihood to exhibit a personality; that personality profile is then matched with complementary ones of other users.
“Science has always been manipulated for negative political purposes and genetics is no exception,” Silver said. “I think the wonderful thing about new genetics is that it destroys old concepts of races — either there are 10,000 races or there is one.”