Word: begun
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...completed in early 2000, will highlight just 60,000 of some 10 million biochemical "beacons" found along the human genome. By comparing the DNA of many individuals in and around these signposts, Genset hopes to pick out specific genes whose malfunctions actually cause disease. It has already begun to work. Using this technique, says Genset chief genomics officer Dr. Daniel Cohen, the company has found two different genes involved in prostate cancer. Cohen points out that the 20 most common diseases, which kill about 80% of the population, are probably linked to some 200 genes out of the body...
...Britain and the U.S., the great age of quantification had begun. An unforeseen consequence of industrialized democracy had been the mammoth increase in the measurement and survey of all sorts of things. Galton relished this new flood of data--"Whenever you can, count" was his motto--and eventually became absorbed in studying the mathematical distribution of what he called "natural ability" among a sample of British subjects. Galton thought natural ability could be tracked down by reading the biographical sketches of eminent Britons in handbooks and dictionaries. When he did so, he discovered that a disproportionate number of these worthies...
...want is for your brain cells to start churning out stomach acid or your nose to turn into a kidney. The only time cells truly have the potential to turn into any and all body parts is very early in a pregnancy, when so-called stem cells haven't begun to specialize...
Such ambivalent feelings are now widely held toward biology. The double-helical structure of DNA, initially admired for its intellectual simplicity, today represents to many a double-edged sword that can be used for evil as well as good. No sooner had scientists at Stanford University in 1973 begun rearranging DNA molecules in test tubes (and, equally important, reinserting the novel DNA segments back into living cells) than critics began likening these "recombinant" DNA procedures to the physicist's power to break apart atoms. Might not some of the test-tube-rearranged DNA molecules impart to their host cells disease...
...virtually no mainstream scientist believes Seed will succeed, there has been a subtle shift in attitudes since the bearded, big-boned maverick loomed into view. Seed put into words what many scientists were thinking, and few were surprised to learn last month that a team in South Korea had begun work on human cloning--and even claimed to have produced a four-cell human embryo...