Knowing what your parents have gives you hints of things, but your genome is a totally unique combination of and interchange of DNA from your parents. There is no one else like you genetically.
Craig VenterRead
Genomics are about individuals. It's about what's specific to you, not your siblings, not your parents - each of us is totally unique. We will only see that uniqueness by drilling down to the genetic code.
Interpretation
Genomics focuses on the individual genetic makeup that makes each person unique.
The quote emphasizes the importance of genomics in understanding what makes each individual distinct at a genetic level. While we share genetic similarities with our family members, it is the unique combinations found in our individual genetic codes that define who we are, highlighting the significance of personalized medicine and tailored healthcare based on our individual genomes.
In practice
In a speech about the future of healthcare, the speaker referenced Venter's quote to illustrate the need for personalized medicine.
Knowing what your parents have gives you hints of things, but your genome is a totally unique combination of and interchange of DNA from your parents. There is no one else like you genetically.
We're moving from reading the genetic code to writing it.
A doctor can save maybe a few hundred lives in a lifetime. A researcher can save the whole world.
The Anthropocentic Age - the first age in which humankind is the dominant species on the planet - cuts both ways: it is up to us to destroy or save the planet. We certainly have the ability.
Genome design is going to be a key part of the future. That's why we need fast, cheap, accurate DNA synthesis, so you can make a lot of iterations of something and test them.
Now that we can read and write the genetic code, put it in digital form and translate it back into synthesized life, it will be possible to speed up biological evolution to the pace of social evolution.
If we had the fundamental laws of nature tomorrow, we still wouldn't understand consciousness. We wouldn't even understand turbulence.
I venture to define science as a series of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiment and observation and fruitful of further experiments and observations. The test of a scientific theory is, I suggest, its fruitfulness.
If penicillin had been judged by its toxicity to guinea pigs, it might never have been used by man.
In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses.
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true science. He who knows it not, and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead. We all had this priceless talent when we were young. But as time goes by, many of us lose it. The true scientist never loses the faculty of amazement. It is the essence of his being.
The basic scientific conclusions on climate change are very robust and for good reason. The greenhouse effect is simple science: greenhouse gases trap heat, and humans are emitting ever more greenhouse gases.
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