Coded for Billions of Years

Everyone is so busy and it started at dawn of this century. Here in the Philippines, everyone is busy dealing with the problems of the country governance. The masses are nit-picking the transactions of the government and the government is tripling its effort to catch up with the international community. I am not really sure with the happenings in the country’s educational system. In my opinion, I believe younger generation of my countrymen should catch up in terms of scientific and mathematical awareness for the world revolves in the exponential growth of scientific productivity. Every minute, scientists around the world is tremendously expanding the mathematical and scientific compendium of ideas.

Scientists are no longer concerned with the mundane activities of things on the surface of the earth. They are in fact pushing science to the limits, delving into the affairs of the collectives, the fickleness of the microscopic and the wonders of the cosmos. Astronomers, astrophysicists, cosmologists and mathematicians are peeking farther and farther to the oldest part of space, of our universe. And just now I realized that we cannot really see the stars in their current state. What we are seeing in the sky is the past of the universe. Biologist, geneticists and medical scientists are peeking deeper and deeper to the basic codes of life, decoding the unit entity of our existence, still going farther and farther to our past. Mathematicians and physicists are doubling their efforts in generalizing the events within and outside the sphere of human interaction. Social scientists and physicists (again) are no longer interested in individual course of action, but they are gearing in capturing the mathematics and laws of complex systems.

A lot and a lot more is happening within a day. Can we, Filipinos, catch up with the scientific developments around the world? How many geneticists do we have? How many astronomers or astrophysicists do we have? The scarcity of the scientists in the Philippines is understandable. We cannot support monetary-wise scientific endeavors yet. In fact, the Philippine economy has not transcended yet to scientific baseline from agricultural and services baseline.

So what can we do? Well, it’s not my problem anymore. I have my own personal issues to resolve and I will instead use my time in resolving these. Also, my popularity has impact and my network is not that extensive which can ramify my comments within the Philippine society.

Let me divert the topic from this qualm to the real reason why I write this entry.

Genetic studies are really leaping in phenomenal rate and it seems that we (the whole society) won’t stop until we have completely mapped and understood our own genetic structure. Yesterday, I read an article about genetic sequencing of a diploid genome, instead of the haploid being used by the Human Genome Project. This time, both pairs of the DNA strands have been sequenced. This is a pivotal event in genetics. At last, we can piece the whole shreds of our DNA’s, from both paternal and maternal lines, into something clear, comprehensible and readable.

For years, a lot had been done to hammer the DNA into something comprehensible but it took several years before we can completely see the whole structure, not just the structure as exemplified from one pair. Upon seeing the Genetic Card of Venter, I had this sudden burst of happiness. Is this already the start of unique human identification card?

The Diploid Genome Sequence of J. Craig Venter

Click here to see the whole Genome

From the images above, I am envisioning that someday that kind of information will be coded in a very small chip and will be implanted in our body and can be used us our identification record. What can you say? It’s paperless. All you need to know about someone is already there.

This is really mesmerizing, seeing the map of one’s genetic make-up. I am hoping that this won’t end here and that someday much more will be derived from this bar-coded, complicated, boring sheet of paper.

I have mush more to say about genetics but I don’t have the luxury of time to write them all. I am hoping someday that I can revisit this topic and completely capture my thoughts in words.

I am just happy today to know that things in scientific fields are working out.