Development and prospect of life science
Academician Ba Denian of China Academy of Engineering
This century is the century of life science. As medicine, the long-term task is to prevent and treat diseases. However, from now on, the main task of medicine will be to maintain and enhance people's health and improve people's quality of life. In this range, medicine used to face patients, but now medicine will face all the people. In the past, drugs were in hospitals, but now in Europe and North America, half of doctors have left hospitals. They live with people in the community, guiding people's health care and medical treatment, and more importantly, guiding people there how to live correctly. Today, there are 97% doctors in hospitals in our country. With the development of the times, doctors will gradually go to the society and enter the crowd. In this sense, the allocation of doctor resources in China is bound to change. At present, there is no concept in China, that is, fast green passage to emergency room. It is absolutely necessary to establish a fast and green emergency passage. The concept of convenient medical treatment is the future direction.
Many countries have begun to implement brain death laws. After brain death, organs, tissues and cells are still alive due to the support of circulation. If the deceased had a good style before his death and offered to donate his organs to others, he could have a kidney and liver transplant.
After the human genome is basically completed, it will have a great impact on medicine and will have a deeper impact. Many genetic diseases can also be prevented by improving life and environment. Drugs are compounds. In the near future, drugs are not only compounds, but also protein, genes, cells and even some tissues and organs. Because of this, in the future drug trials, pharmacology, toxicology and clinic are no longer the first to be examined, but ethics is the first, and everything must be examined ethically first. Why are you talking about this? Because, if genes are to become drugs, or tissues and organs will become drugs in the future, they should be allowed first.
Excerpt from Science and Technology Daily
Write the book of life
Wei Nong
/kloc-in April of 0/4, scientists completed the sequencing of the human genome, that is, they finally finished writing the book of human life that was once considered impossible; This book contains many secrets of mankind; It contains the key to transforming medicine and understanding diseases; It also contains all people's ardent expectations for life science to transform their lives.
A brand-new life science era has begun.
The last role in the book of life
On April 8th, at 0: 00 EDT, six laboratories around the world 13 sent the last gene code to a central database by e-mail, completing the last step on the long exploration road of Human Genome Project13. At two o'clock in the morning, Collins, president of the National Institutes of Health, announced the official end of the human genome project at a small celebration in Bethesda, a small town outside Washington.
Since then, the human genome project has entered history-beginning:1990; Completion time: 2003; Participating countries: USA, UK, German, French, Japanese and China; Cost: $2.6 billion; Results: The sequence of about 3 billion genetic codes in human genetic material was excluded.
The human genome project is called the "moon landing plan" of life science, and the difficulty can be imagined. However, the progress is smoother than expected. Previously, scientists have announced the completion of the project at least twice, but they have not completed it, just a sketch of the human genome. This time, scientists' latest "book of life" only covers 99% of the human genome.
However, compared with the previous two releases of the human genome, this time it seems to be much calmer in both scientific and political circles. Perhaps, just as Shakespeare's famous saying "The past is only a prelude" was quoted by scientists in charge of the human genome when announcing the news, scientists have no time to reflect on the achievements of the human genome, because more arduous tasks are still ahead.
After the "Human Genome Project" officially ended, the new project "Genome to Life" under the responsibility of the US Department of Energy has begun. The new exploration will push gene research into all aspects of life, such as the role of genes in human race, the influence on personality and behavior, and so on. Experts say that further research is likely to bring about a series of social, ethical and legal debates.
The golden age has just begun.
1On April 25th, 953, the British magazine Nature published papers by james watson and francis crick. This achievement is considered by many people as "one of the most important scientific discoveries in the 20th century": the genetic material DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) has a double helix structure. Since then, human beings have made rapid progress on the road of life science exploration. However, how to arrange the genetic code in DNA has been puzzling scientists all over the world.
Compared with the draft human genome originally published in 2000, the complete genome has filled many loopholes in the draft and made many modifications. There is an error in the sketch every 10000 bases. Now, the error rate has dropped to 65438+ 100000.
At present, researchers believe that one of the most important and biggest problems is how many genes people need to complete the development and growth of life. The current estimate is between 25,000 and 30,000, far below the original estimate of 65,438+10,000 by scientists. Francis Collins said that the real analysis has just begun. "We will find similarities and many differences between people."
Yes, mankind has just understood all the letters of this big book, but a broader "story" is still waiting to be read. Today's achievement is only a glimpse of this book. Moreover, what has been completed only covers 99% of the gene regions contained in the human genome, and the remaining 1% is the part that cannot be solved by the existing sequencing technology.
Long before the completion of the complete human genome, scientists have shifted their goals to gene function identification and protein research. Scientists believe that at least 4000 genes are directly related to the occurrence of human diseases, and a large number of genes are inextricably linked with diseases. However, before determining the pathogenic genes, we must first analyze the position, structure and function of tens of thousands of genes with genetic significance in the genome.
After finding out the pathogenic genes, genetic testing will develop rapidly. Take cancer for example? The disease usually takes several years to form, and effective tests can warn people of possible cancer risks. Genetic testing can also help people understand themselves better. Many people with a family history have long wanted to find out whether they are destined to have a family genetic disease. Of course, some people will refuse to take the test for privacy reasons.
Scientists predict that genetic medicine will enter a golden age within 10 to 20 years after the completion of the "Human Genome Project".
The story behind the book of life
The human genome project can be traced back to 1984, when scientists met at a ski resort in Utah, USA, to discuss how to identify the genetic mutation of the atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima, Japan. In the report of 1987, the Advisory Committee of the US Department of Energy urged the United States to start the research on human genes, and foresaw that this research was "extraordinary in breadth and depth" and "will eventually provide people with a human book".
1988, a federal report in the United States approved the human genome project. 1990, the United States Congress began to provide funding for the project, and the research was completed on September 30, 2005. At the same time, all the findings will be made public during the research. The goals of this project are: to measure the sequence of 3 billion base pairs contained in the human genome; Determine the gene distribution on 24 pairs of chromosomes; Draw human anatomy map at molecular level; Input all the genetic information of human genes into gene bank to help scientists master how base pairs make up genes, the function of each gene, how they interact and control people's life process.
At that time, not all scientists thought the research was feasible, because the necessary technology hardly existed. In the first few years after the project began, most researchers devoted themselves to developing gene analysis methods, so computational biology and information storage technology made rapid progress.
At the beginning of the project, it costs 10 to determine a base pair. A trained technician can identify about 10000 base pairs every working day. At present, the cost of measuring a base pair is only 5 cents, and the Lightning robot can process 10000 base pairs per second.
1999, China also joined the research and undertook the task of 1% sequencing. At that time, the human genome project was greatly accelerated, which was not unrelated to the emergence of Celera Company. Celera Company, led by Venter, who had done research in the National Institutes of Health, announced in 1998 that it would determine the human genetic data within two years and sell the data to research institutions and pharmaceutical companies. Celera used the high-speed sequencer invented by Venter, which greatly improved the research progress and brought great pressure to the human genome project. In Celera's laboratory, the advanced gene sequencing machine runs 24 hours a day, and the sketch is completed two months ahead of the human genome project. Not to be outdone, the National Institute of Human Genome in Collins produced a more accurate version of Venter Atlas in June 2000.
Although the human genome project has officially ended, the sequencing is not 100% complete. Scientists say that due to some unfathomable reasons, 1% of the human genome has proved impossible to sequence. Only after the emergence of relevant new technologies can this problem be overcome. Perhaps there are other mysteries of life in this 1%.
These mysteries are not so easy to solve, as one scholar said: "When we talk about nature, we think of what our eyes can see, such as the sun, the moon and the earth. What draws the human body design is the great power of nature that our eyes can't see. "
Excerpted from Science Network
High-tech frontier-life science /gkjqy/smkx/
With the development of biological science, the impact of biotechnology on society is increasing. This is mainly manifested in the following aspects: 1. Ideas that affect people, such as evolutionism and ecology, are being accepted by more and more people. 2. Promote the improvement of social productivity, such as the biotechnology industry is forming a new industry; Due to the application of biological science and technology, agricultural productivity has been significantly improved. With the development of biological science, more and more people will engage in biology-related occupations. 4. Promote people to improve their health and quality of life and prolong their life. 5. Affect people's way of thinking, such as the development of ecology to promote people's overall thinking; With the development of brain science, biotechnology will help to improve human thinking. 6. Impact on the ethical system of human society, such as IVF, organ transplantation, artificial modification of human genes, etc. Will challenge the existing ethical system of human society. 7. The development of biotechnology may also have a negative impact on society and nature. For example, large-scale production of genetically modified organisms to transform the natural gene pool of species may affect the stability of the biosphere. Understanding the relationship between science and technology and society is an important part of scientific quality.