Word: dna
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Just as the discovery of the electron in 1897 was a seminal event for the 20th century, the seeds for the 21st century were spawned in 1953, when James Watson blurted out to Francis Crick how four nucleic acids could pair to form the self-copying code of a DNA molecule. Now we're just a few years away from one of the most important breakthroughs of all time: deciphering the human genome, the 100,000 genes encoded by 3 billion chemical pairs in our DNA...
...million years since we hominids separated from apes, our DNA has evolved less than 2%. But in the next century we'll be able to alter our DNA radically, encoding our visions and vanities while concocting new life-forms. When Dr. Frankenstein made his monster, he wrestled with the moral issue of whether he should allow it to reproduce: "Had I the right, for my own benefit, to inflict the curse upon everlasting generations?" Will such questions require us to develop new moral philosophies...
...biotech age will also give us more reason to guard our personal privacy. Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, got it wrong: rather than centralizing power in the hands of the state, DNA technology has empowered individuals and families. But the state will have an important role, making sure that no one, including insurance companies, can look at our genetic data without our permission or use it to discriminate against...
...genes that serve as the blueprint for a functioning human being--each gene carrying instructions that tell cells how to produce a specific protein. Scientists had located about 1,500 genes, in a rough way, on the 46 chromosomes--the long, twisted strands of DNA cradled in protein at the heart of every human cell. But they had deciphered, or sequenced, only a handful of the many-hundred-word "sentences" that each gene represents--sentences made up of three-letter "words" built in turn from four available molecular "letters," represented...
...while the genome project has been methodically chronicling the details of human cells--including long stretches of DNA, amounting to some 97% of the total, that contain no genes at all--private companies have opted for a very different approach. Their maps are more like satellite photographs that take in the entire route but concentrate only on the highlights. "The thing people are highly interested in," says Randal Scott, president and chief scientific officer at Incyte Pharmaceuticals, based in Palo Alto, Calif., one of the players in the private-sector gene-mapping game, "is where all the cities...