Thursday, May 26, 2005
As the Future Catches You - Genomics
As the Future Catches You - Genomics
© 2001 by Juan Enriquez
Wealth is ever more mobile and concentrated. As of 1995 we began to read the full gene sequence of bacteria, insects, plants, animals, humans which is written in a four-letter code ATCG. We are beginning to acquire direct and deliberate control over the evolution of all life forms on the planet including ourselves.
Each seed has a long string of gene data that looks like the following, so why not engineer mosquito genes so that they have the opposite effect. If mosquito saliva contained antibodies, you could immunize people and animals by making sure they were bitten. The digital revolution was a large waterfall.
A few countries and companies understood this change that is how poor countries like Finland, Singapore and Taiwan got so wealthy so quickly. In 1938, the richest country per person in Asia was the Philippines. In 1954, according to the World Bank, the most promising Asian economy was Burma. The two nucleotide based pairs that code all lives ATCG have already led some of the world’s largest companies such as Monsanto, DuPont, Novartis, IBM, Hertz, Compaq, Lexus, and SmithKline to declare that their future lies in life science. Some life science companies will crash spectacularly others will get larger than Microsoft or Cisco. The world’s mega mergers are going to be driven by digital and genetic code.
You currently spend about 9 times as much for doctors and medical interventions as you do on medicines and prevention. Treatment will shift from emergency interventions to a deliberate and personalized prevention just as dentistry did. You need ever fewer people, time or capital to build a nation.
The great cartographers of today aren’t mapping continents, rivers, mountains or cities they are mapping the genetic code of all living things. These maps are changing the way we look at all life. As a country or region if you understand and apply technology, you can postpone becoming a wondrous but abandoned archeological site.
The cradle of civilization is today’s Iraq. In 1200, Cambodia was one of the richest countries in the world. In 1500 Peru and Mexico all Europeans and the Switzerland of Africa was Uganda. But why is it so hard to keep a country together today. Individuals can leverage technology. They no longer need a big state to get very rich because the way you generate wealth is very different today and those who generate knowledge are the ones getting richer. The knowledge component becomes more important and manual labor less visible.
When you are trying to spread and sell knowledge keeping something exclusive and rare often leads to a loss of value, what matters most is that the purchaser becomes part of a network and that the network keeps growing. Each additional phone or fax sold makes the network more valuable so each purchaser becomes a salesman. Don’t you have a fax? You should get one.
Look , for example, at one of the world’s largest computer networks so they ask PC owners like you whether you will donate part of your unused capacity. Those who founded search for extraterrestrial intelligence hoped 100,000 global citizens would sign up, more than two million did and the network grows every week. AIDS researchers are seen copying this model creating the world’s largest academic computing site designed to understand and attack the virus that mutates very rapidly. The broader the network the easier it is to communicate, the more each product is worth and the cheaper it becomes to purchase or use it. What makes money today is the knowledge necessary to process and distribute information.
In 1990 one of the world’s ten wealthiest individuals was American. In 2000 six out of ten were American. Many countries are failing, falling apart and disappearing. In 1950, Singapore was an isolated, tiny poor island - it wasn’t even a country before 1965. Its leaders went to Malaysia and asked whether it would be willing to absorb Singapore and make it part of its state. By 1985 Singaporeans were producing $8,000 per person. The British were already $11,000. By 1999 Singaporeans were 2% wealthier than the British.
The future belongs to small populations who build empires of mind. Ideas are different, the more you spread them the more valuable they become. So now those who produce knowledge get consistently richer. As we get more information we get better at processing and re-transmitting information. Today’s dominant alphabet no longer codes in 26 letters but in two, one and zero. In 1997 telephone wires carried more digital data than voice. That it is likely few of us have ever heard the name of what will be the world’s largest company in 2020.
The letters used, the order of the letters and where these letters are placed within a sentence. Lets go together can mean let’s go together or lets go to get her. This science of nature substitutes one string of ATCGs for another particularly within a section of DNA’s that codes actively. The organism can be drastically altered. We have only 1/3rd more genes than a worm. Around 99% of your genes have partial counterparts in mice. By the time we get to those pigmy chimps, the gene overlap with humans is about 98.5%. The variation between your genome and that of your brother, neighbor, worst enemy or that of any other person on the planet is miniscule. Of every thousand letters of genetic code, we differ from our neighbor by less than one letter that is by less than one ATC or G base pair. The real differences between one person and another are less than 0.0003%.
Even three letters out of three billion can make a huge difference. If you are missing CTT at a specific spot in your genome you carry cystic fibrosis. A child born in 1900 in the US had a life expectancy of 46 years. By the end of the century it was 78, close to a 70% increase and genetics is likely to increase this life span significantly. In 1900 the three leading causes of death in the United States were pneumonia, tuberculosis and diarrhea. Today they are heart disease, cancer and stroke. Hazelton believes that understanding the genes will allow us to live 120 years. After that we may be young and healthy forever. Hazelton is one of the United States leading AIDS researchers, CEO of a major pharmaceutical company. Hazelton’s company has applied for 9,200 patents.
Our children will likely be running on the beach well into their 90s powered by replacement body parts that come from a variety of people and are grown in various countries. Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe they train three executives for each job because two may die of AIDS, but most societies do not understand genetic discovery and that makes them for all practical purposes functionally illiterate in the language that codes all life on this planet. We have started to accumulate the instruments and knowledge required to control directly and deliberately the evolution of our species and that of every other species on the planet.
In 1991 all the world’s labs have identified only 2000 genes. By 1995 Ventura and his team were able to publish a partial map of 35,000 genes. In 1974, Monsanto estimated that sequencing a single gene would cost equivalent of $150,000,000.00. By 1998 the cost of sequencing a gene was $150.00, by 2001 it could be less than $50.00. The average gene is about 27,000 base pairs about eight pages of tightly packed footnotes.
In 1971, a General Electric scientist attempted to patent a bacterium that allowed patterns on living organisms and genes. Pharmaceuticals are likely to become niche products targeted to individual genotypes and new products will likely appear weekly. It helps to have super computers for maps of parallel processing. Of the world’s 500 largest computers, 217 are in the United States, 63 in Germany and 56 in Japan for the centers leading the life science revolution. Many great minds are flocking to defenders leading the life science revolution. Maryland, Boston, Cambridge, San Francisco, San Diego. Singapore has just launched a map of this multibillion-dollar life science initiative.
ATCGs and 1 and 0s are interchangeable and may lead to even more powerful data processors, some of which could be based on DNA. By 2010 a computer should have the same processing capacity as the human brain. Just as the industrial revolution allowed some people to multiply their physical capacity a 100 or a 1000 fold, biology is now driven by applied maps, statistics, computer science robotics. The world’s best programmers are increasingly gravitating toward Biology, Bio-informatics and Bio-computing. The few smart people are going to be able to do a lot of biology very quickly. This human genome was privately mapped in a single lab but employed only 50 people running sequencing machines.
It becomes clear that the world’s most powerful and compact coding and information-processing system is a genome. Gene tests will lead to personalized medicine. You will be able to test whether one medicine or another works better for you before you take. Many drug launchers have died in phase three trials after millions of dollars are spent. Today for every dollar we spend on medicines, we also spend nine on treatments and interventions. Hazleton thinks we will soon spend at least an equal amount on prevention just as we do with dentist. Grandpa’s lifestyle seems very primitive to us just as today’s medicine will to our grandchildren. Imagine them saying: “Grammy, are you pulling my leg when you tell me they used to poison people and cut body parts off to try to secure cancer
Most middle aged workers were earning 9% less than their parents had 25 years earlier, and if normal women had not gone to work, most family incomes would not have increased at all during the 1980’s and 1990’s. In the United States almost one-third of all Ph.D.’s science and engineering students are Asian. Two out of a hundred are African-American or African. It took the telephone 35 years to get to one-quarter of US homes. Coin the term creative destruction new products and discoveries relentless mostly destroyed the old.
The genomic revolution could essentially lead to anywhere between 4,000 and 10,000 new medicines. Small companies can generate a great deal of wealth and get very large very quickly with ever fewer employees.
Only 300 average genes out of 26,000 have no counterpart in mice and about 85% of two species genes sequences are identical. You are all worms just a bunch of worms and little did she know how right she was because basic thousand genes are conserved across the species. History changes faster than one might expect and history changes slower than one might expect. You can stand on the sideline and soon the state will guide things. Where you can help yourself your family your company and your country navigate this wondrous and scary adventure. We are about to go over waterfall and in a few centuries February 12, 2001 will represent the divide between an air before human threaten up genes and the post genomic era. The end actually is just the beginning.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609609033
© 2001 by Juan Enriquez
Wealth is ever more mobile and concentrated. As of 1995 we began to read the full gene sequence of bacteria, insects, plants, animals, humans which is written in a four-letter code ATCG. We are beginning to acquire direct and deliberate control over the evolution of all life forms on the planet including ourselves.
Each seed has a long string of gene data that looks like the following, so why not engineer mosquito genes so that they have the opposite effect. If mosquito saliva contained antibodies, you could immunize people and animals by making sure they were bitten. The digital revolution was a large waterfall.
A few countries and companies understood this change that is how poor countries like Finland, Singapore and Taiwan got so wealthy so quickly. In 1938, the richest country per person in Asia was the Philippines. In 1954, according to the World Bank, the most promising Asian economy was Burma. The two nucleotide based pairs that code all lives ATCG have already led some of the world’s largest companies such as Monsanto, DuPont, Novartis, IBM, Hertz, Compaq, Lexus, and SmithKline to declare that their future lies in life science. Some life science companies will crash spectacularly others will get larger than Microsoft or Cisco. The world’s mega mergers are going to be driven by digital and genetic code.
You currently spend about 9 times as much for doctors and medical interventions as you do on medicines and prevention. Treatment will shift from emergency interventions to a deliberate and personalized prevention just as dentistry did. You need ever fewer people, time or capital to build a nation.
The great cartographers of today aren’t mapping continents, rivers, mountains or cities they are mapping the genetic code of all living things. These maps are changing the way we look at all life. As a country or region if you understand and apply technology, you can postpone becoming a wondrous but abandoned archeological site.
The cradle of civilization is today’s Iraq. In 1200, Cambodia was one of the richest countries in the world. In 1500 Peru and Mexico all Europeans and the Switzerland of Africa was Uganda. But why is it so hard to keep a country together today. Individuals can leverage technology. They no longer need a big state to get very rich because the way you generate wealth is very different today and those who generate knowledge are the ones getting richer. The knowledge component becomes more important and manual labor less visible.
When you are trying to spread and sell knowledge keeping something exclusive and rare often leads to a loss of value, what matters most is that the purchaser becomes part of a network and that the network keeps growing. Each additional phone or fax sold makes the network more valuable so each purchaser becomes a salesman. Don’t you have a fax? You should get one.
Look , for example, at one of the world’s largest computer networks so they ask PC owners like you whether you will donate part of your unused capacity. Those who founded search for extraterrestrial intelligence hoped 100,000 global citizens would sign up, more than two million did and the network grows every week. AIDS researchers are seen copying this model creating the world’s largest academic computing site designed to understand and attack the virus that mutates very rapidly. The broader the network the easier it is to communicate, the more each product is worth and the cheaper it becomes to purchase or use it. What makes money today is the knowledge necessary to process and distribute information.
In 1990 one of the world’s ten wealthiest individuals was American. In 2000 six out of ten were American. Many countries are failing, falling apart and disappearing. In 1950, Singapore was an isolated, tiny poor island - it wasn’t even a country before 1965. Its leaders went to Malaysia and asked whether it would be willing to absorb Singapore and make it part of its state. By 1985 Singaporeans were producing $8,000 per person. The British were already $11,000. By 1999 Singaporeans were 2% wealthier than the British.
The future belongs to small populations who build empires of mind. Ideas are different, the more you spread them the more valuable they become. So now those who produce knowledge get consistently richer. As we get more information we get better at processing and re-transmitting information. Today’s dominant alphabet no longer codes in 26 letters but in two, one and zero. In 1997 telephone wires carried more digital data than voice. That it is likely few of us have ever heard the name of what will be the world’s largest company in 2020.
The letters used, the order of the letters and where these letters are placed within a sentence. Lets go together can mean let’s go together or lets go to get her. This science of nature substitutes one string of ATCGs for another particularly within a section of DNA’s that codes actively. The organism can be drastically altered. We have only 1/3rd more genes than a worm. Around 99% of your genes have partial counterparts in mice. By the time we get to those pigmy chimps, the gene overlap with humans is about 98.5%. The variation between your genome and that of your brother, neighbor, worst enemy or that of any other person on the planet is miniscule. Of every thousand letters of genetic code, we differ from our neighbor by less than one letter that is by less than one ATC or G base pair. The real differences between one person and another are less than 0.0003%.
Even three letters out of three billion can make a huge difference. If you are missing CTT at a specific spot in your genome you carry cystic fibrosis. A child born in 1900 in the US had a life expectancy of 46 years. By the end of the century it was 78, close to a 70% increase and genetics is likely to increase this life span significantly. In 1900 the three leading causes of death in the United States were pneumonia, tuberculosis and diarrhea. Today they are heart disease, cancer and stroke. Hazelton believes that understanding the genes will allow us to live 120 years. After that we may be young and healthy forever. Hazelton is one of the United States leading AIDS researchers, CEO of a major pharmaceutical company. Hazelton’s company has applied for 9,200 patents.
Our children will likely be running on the beach well into their 90s powered by replacement body parts that come from a variety of people and are grown in various countries. Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe they train three executives for each job because two may die of AIDS, but most societies do not understand genetic discovery and that makes them for all practical purposes functionally illiterate in the language that codes all life on this planet. We have started to accumulate the instruments and knowledge required to control directly and deliberately the evolution of our species and that of every other species on the planet.
In 1991 all the world’s labs have identified only 2000 genes. By 1995 Ventura and his team were able to publish a partial map of 35,000 genes. In 1974, Monsanto estimated that sequencing a single gene would cost equivalent of $150,000,000.00. By 1998 the cost of sequencing a gene was $150.00, by 2001 it could be less than $50.00. The average gene is about 27,000 base pairs about eight pages of tightly packed footnotes.
In 1971, a General Electric scientist attempted to patent a bacterium that allowed patterns on living organisms and genes. Pharmaceuticals are likely to become niche products targeted to individual genotypes and new products will likely appear weekly. It helps to have super computers for maps of parallel processing. Of the world’s 500 largest computers, 217 are in the United States, 63 in Germany and 56 in Japan for the centers leading the life science revolution. Many great minds are flocking to defenders leading the life science revolution. Maryland, Boston, Cambridge, San Francisco, San Diego. Singapore has just launched a map of this multibillion-dollar life science initiative.
ATCGs and 1 and 0s are interchangeable and may lead to even more powerful data processors, some of which could be based on DNA. By 2010 a computer should have the same processing capacity as the human brain. Just as the industrial revolution allowed some people to multiply their physical capacity a 100 or a 1000 fold, biology is now driven by applied maps, statistics, computer science robotics. The world’s best programmers are increasingly gravitating toward Biology, Bio-informatics and Bio-computing. The few smart people are going to be able to do a lot of biology very quickly. This human genome was privately mapped in a single lab but employed only 50 people running sequencing machines.
It becomes clear that the world’s most powerful and compact coding and information-processing system is a genome. Gene tests will lead to personalized medicine. You will be able to test whether one medicine or another works better for you before you take. Many drug launchers have died in phase three trials after millions of dollars are spent. Today for every dollar we spend on medicines, we also spend nine on treatments and interventions. Hazleton thinks we will soon spend at least an equal amount on prevention just as we do with dentist. Grandpa’s lifestyle seems very primitive to us just as today’s medicine will to our grandchildren. Imagine them saying: “Grammy, are you pulling my leg when you tell me they used to poison people and cut body parts off to try to secure cancer
Most middle aged workers were earning 9% less than their parents had 25 years earlier, and if normal women had not gone to work, most family incomes would not have increased at all during the 1980’s and 1990’s. In the United States almost one-third of all Ph.D.’s science and engineering students are Asian. Two out of a hundred are African-American or African. It took the telephone 35 years to get to one-quarter of US homes. Coin the term creative destruction new products and discoveries relentless mostly destroyed the old.
The genomic revolution could essentially lead to anywhere between 4,000 and 10,000 new medicines. Small companies can generate a great deal of wealth and get very large very quickly with ever fewer employees.
Only 300 average genes out of 26,000 have no counterpart in mice and about 85% of two species genes sequences are identical. You are all worms just a bunch of worms and little did she know how right she was because basic thousand genes are conserved across the species. History changes faster than one might expect and history changes slower than one might expect. You can stand on the sideline and soon the state will guide things. Where you can help yourself your family your company and your country navigate this wondrous and scary adventure. We are about to go over waterfall and in a few centuries February 12, 2001 will represent the divide between an air before human threaten up genes and the post genomic era. The end actually is just the beginning.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609609033
