BUSINESSGenome drafts cloud future of gene-to-drug paradigmStreet Smarts. By Scott Gottlieb, MD, amednews contributor. March 19, 2001. If there's one criticism that's been lodged against genomics as a tool for drug discovery, it's that information derived from the sequencing of the human genome provides only a static picture of senescence and disease. In the real world, genes are involved in a dynamic process, constantly interacting with the environment. Even if the element of disease is introduced into a person's genetic code, it's not certain that he or she will ultimately succumb to a particular illness. The occurrence of a disease may depend on how much of a particular gene product is made, or the type of post-translational modifications that occur. The idea that scientists will eventually draw direct lines between certain genes and the expression of disease vastly underestimates the complexities inherent in biological systems. One thing made clear from last month's publication of the papers containing the first drafts of the human genome is that it's going to be a lot harder to uncover "disease-causing" genes. The last common ancestor of mice and men probably lived 100 million years ago, yet according to Celera Genomics Group, the firm's scientists have found only 300 genes that people have and mice do not. Celera is a division of Norwalk, Conn.-based Applera Corp. The human genome is far more similar to that of a fruit fly, or even an earthworm, than most would feel comfortable believing. The real difference, it seems, rests not with our sequences of nucleotides but with how genes are turned on and off. What does this mean for all the companies who made their trade in gene discovery? These companies once postulated that every disease and every major biological process would be coded for at its own discrete location on the human DNA. The recent findings about the simplicity of our own genome turn these old notions upside down.
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Copyright 2001 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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