New CRISPR-based Map Ties Every Human Gene To Its Function (mit.edu) 18
In 2003, the Human Genome Project finished sequencing every bit of human DNA, remembers MIT News.
"Now, over two decades later, MIT Professor Jonathan Weissman and colleagues have gone beyond the sequence to present the first comprehensive functional map of genes that are expressed in human cells." The data from this project, published online June 9 in Cell, ties each gene to its job in the cell, and is the culmination of years of collaboration on the single-cell sequencing method Perturb-seq.
The data are available for other scientists to use. "It's a big resource in the way the human genome is a big resource, in that you can go in and do discovery-based research," says Weissman, who is also a member of the Whitehead Institute and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute....
"I think this dataset is going to enable all sorts of analyses that we haven't even thought up yet by people who come from other parts of biology, and suddenly they just have this available to draw on," says former Weissman Lab postdoc Tom Norman, a co-senior author of the paper.
The announcement credits the single-sequencing tool Perturb-seq and CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing which introduced genetic changes into cells and then captured information about which RNAs expressed (uses single-cell RNA sequencing).
The researchers scaled the method to the entire genome using human blood cancer cell lines and noncancerous cells derived from the retina, ultimately using Perturb-seq across more than 2.5 million cells.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm for sharing the news.
"Now, over two decades later, MIT Professor Jonathan Weissman and colleagues have gone beyond the sequence to present the first comprehensive functional map of genes that are expressed in human cells." The data from this project, published online June 9 in Cell, ties each gene to its job in the cell, and is the culmination of years of collaboration on the single-cell sequencing method Perturb-seq.
The data are available for other scientists to use. "It's a big resource in the way the human genome is a big resource, in that you can go in and do discovery-based research," says Weissman, who is also a member of the Whitehead Institute and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute....
"I think this dataset is going to enable all sorts of analyses that we haven't even thought up yet by people who come from other parts of biology, and suddenly they just have this available to draw on," says former Weissman Lab postdoc Tom Norman, a co-senior author of the paper.
The announcement credits the single-sequencing tool Perturb-seq and CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing which introduced genetic changes into cells and then captured information about which RNAs expressed (uses single-cell RNA sequencing).
The researchers scaled the method to the entire genome using human blood cancer cell lines and noncancerous cells derived from the retina, ultimately using Perturb-seq across more than 2.5 million cells.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm for sharing the news.
Designer kids! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Here we go!"
Kids? No, we'll switch-off the /.-posting-gene of BeauHD.
News from the FUTURE (Score:4, Funny)
In 2003, the Human Genome Project finished sequencing every bit of human DNA, remembers MIT News.
"Now, over two decades later, MIT Professor Jonathan Weissman and colleagues have gone beyond the sequence to present the first comprehensive functional map of genes that are expressed in human cells."
Today is June 11, 2022...
Re:News from the FUTURE (Score:5, Funny)
It's a preemptive dupe.
Well that prove it without question. (Score:1)
We are all connected.
Blame crisper, not god.
Big but more work needed (Score:5, Insightful)
This is important and on the level of sequencing the genome. This study ties every gene to some of its functionality on the cell level. A lot more work needs to be done to figure out things on the systemic phenotype level but it sets the foundation.
Re: (Score:3)
This is just another amazing step towards the technology of this century - the manipulation of genetic material to create desired characteristics in living organisms. Be it fixing genes that cause Alzheimers or designing a fungus that grows biofuel using atmospheric CO2. Last century was the century of electronics, this century is the century of biology, just in time too probably given the wreckage that climate change is going to cause. Try reading the Wikipedia page on Perturb-seq linked to, it may as well
Re: Big but more work needed (Score:2)
I doubt this will be the century of biology. The 2100s, if we can even make it to that, will be the century of biology. We have too many people in this century who are skeptical of science. Not to mention most people do not even care about somebody else getting Alzheimers, Jesus wont let it happen to them.
Re: (Score:1)
Amazing How Far We Have Come (Score:3)
My understanding is the amount of binary information that exists in a human cell would comfortably fit on a DVD ROM.
I can believe they can map little strips of it to what they do, but I can't imagine how a zygote manages to turn itself into a functioning human made of trillions of cells in hundreds if not thousands of well defined structures. We are talking about a self-modifying program that deals with random events and environments.
I wonder if we will ever understand it.
Re: (Score:2)
We are talking about a self-modifying program ...
The program is quite static. Every cell has the same copy of program and this program is normally only modified by external events.
What gets modified in the normal functioning of a cell is the flow of the program, so the set of functions called by the program. But the functions are all there from the beginning and actually present in all cells.
... that deals with random events and environments.
Well, only so far as it is capable of dealing with a noisy environment. It still needs the right tools to have evolved before it can do this and is limited by it's '
Re: (Score:1)
Which is a medium that was designed to play back audio albums, approx 64 min to 80 mins.
Interestingly it takes the human cell approximately 1 hour to copy all the information during cell division which is approximately the same order of magnitude as the playback speed of a CD ROM as originally designed.
Just think of the applications for such information density and playback speed, considering aggregation to increase bandwidth, maybe there is a huge market for this to
More garbage "science" claims. (Score:2)
I have no doubt that the team has achieved something here, and whatever the achievement is the people who did it probably deserve congrats of some sort, but it's not what is claimed.
If we suddenly now know the job of every gene in the human genome, then where are the cures for all genetic diseases and disorders? Surely, we should now have a document from this team that will allow big pharma to make 100% perfect tests for all genetic conditions, and we should soon start seeing deliberately designed human mut
Re:More garbage "science" claims. (Score:4, Insightful)
Again, I am not claiming that nothing was achieved by these people, just challenging the idea that they now KNOW the job (what it does, how it does it, etc) of EVERY GENE in the human genome. I say PROVE it, or stop making over-the-top claims - leave those bragging rights to some future team of scientists who inevitably WILL (and quite possibly by standing on this team's shoulders) actually know the job of every gene in the human genome.
That's not what they claimed. They claim to know what RNA every gene writes. Even ignoring that some genes may do things other than write RNA, that's a long way from knowing the "job" of the gene. A lot of that RNA will code proteins, and we know the translation from RNA to protein - but even working out how a protein folds is a huge task, never mind figuring out what it does once constructed. And what if the RNA isn't code for protein construction?
It's certainly a big step forward - if we think that protein X is important in a disease, we can look for RNA sequences that construct protein X, and track that back to what gene creates it, then start looking for variants of that gene. But it's a long way from fully understanding human biology.
Re: (Score:2)
In order to be a gene, a bit of DNA must be translatable into an RNA sequence which in turn is translated into a protein.
Most DNA is not a gene.
Stupid (Score:2)
But have they found the 'stupid' gene yet? No? Probably because there seems to be just an enormous plethora of genes guaranteeing stupidity.
The abortion should stay legal (Score:1)