I'm also in a human biological variation course. Technically, it's an anthropology course- but it's definitely more on the biological/genetic/evolutionary side of things.
I spent a long time memorizing the systems that play into making a human on the genetic level.
Did you know, there're over 3 billion base pairs of DNA in the human body? From there, there're over 25,000 protein coding genes- which is only as small small fraction of the total number of genes in the human body as the majority of the human genome is made of regulatory genes- those that turn the other ones on and off.
And if any of the genes is broken, don't get me started. It can only take one mistake on one small part of one chromosome- called a locus, loci when plural- to become a truly faulty human being. And that's just a simply little mutation.There's also redundancy, adaptation, acclimatization, and then the more specific stuff like: single nucleotide polymoprhisms. If anything goes wrong, whether due to genetic or environmental fault- you're facing mass confusion within the human genome.
All of this, it's quantifiable. We can recreate DNA. We can sex AND "race" a skeleton based on simple patterns in the skeleton. We can forecast population wide mutations with simply math. And, this is the great part, we haven't even really begun to understand any of it. Over 50% of the human genome? We have no idea what it does. But, we're slowly getting there. We'll probably be able to "fix" humans before our lives are over- maybe we'll be able to live forever and really get a sense of systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genome
ReplyDeleteI think that it's really interesting that we can figure out aspects of our body (of the system) even without fully understanding them. If we were able to understand the full genetic layout of humans, would we be able to keep all of that in mind while forming remedies, or would that, like any other system, inevitably have aspects and parts left out?
ReplyDeleteI was just having lunch yesterday with one of the people who works on the zebrafish project here at UO (like many random faculty members, I know him through the network system of families who have small children). He helps to run the center here that keeps track of and make connections among data and research worldwide on zebrafish genetics: http://zfin.org/cgi-bin/webdriver?MIval=aa-ZDB_home.apg
ReplyDeleteHe said that even though we have discovered so much about genomes, it has not provided us with the magic keys to understanding that we predicted it would. Not yet, anyway. He said something similar to you Connor, that even if we figure out all the parts, it may not mean we understand those aspects that make the sum of the parts greater than their whole. He also said (like Renee said) that he wished systems were discussed much earlier in school.