Researchers analysed thousands of laboratory-made plasmids and discovered that nearly half of them had defects, raising questions of experimental reproducibility.
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Harvard geneticist George Church is convinced everyone should have his or her genomes sequenced. Such tests would reveal the rare diseases and handful of cancers that we’re all at some risk for, even if our family members don’t have them.
But many others in the field say we still don’t know enough about genetics to justify getting the test done.
“I think the evidence is not there yet for that balance to be tilted more toward population screening,” says Muin Khoury, director of the office of public health genomics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The first human genome sequence was completed in draft form in 2000 for $3 billion. The cost has come down so much — to about $1,000 — that it’s now conceivable for people to get all their genetic information read out without help from insurance, which usually won’t cover the procedure.
The problem is it’s still easier to get the data than to know what to do with it.
Right now, Khoury says, studies reveal variations in the genome that might not cause problems but could lead...