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Published online 17 October 2007 | Nature 449, 762-763 (2007) | doi:10.1038/449762a

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So similar, yet so different

Tiny pieces of the genome can already explain many human characteristics. Erika Check Hayden looks at what they might reveal in the future.

In his 2000 State of the Union Address, President Bill Clinton chose to emphasize something he had recently heard from a genome researcher: that humans are all, irrespective of race, 99.9% the same genetically.

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  • The entire particulate gene concept is wrong. The biological information (the so-called genetic program) is non-physical as originally proposed by Wilhelm Johanssen in 1909. An organism is a natural biocomputer. It has software (biological program stored on the chromosomes, the storage disk of the cell - the biochip) and hardware (all the chemical structures including DNA). Genetic engineering is biohardware technology and not biosoftware technology. For more details read: The Computer Universe, 2006 published by Adam Publishers, New Delhi, India. Also another book: The Great Gene Fiasco by the same publisher.

    • 17 Oct, 2007
    • Posted by: Pallacken Wahid
  • Human biodiversiy as founded on circumstantial quali= tative/quantitative genoma expression in dependence of factors as SNP and epigenetics(genetic freedom)matters the phenotypic diversity between persons and/or popula tions;it reflects somatic and socio-psychological adaptation attained via horizontal natural selection by material and psychic environments. If things are such way it has to be considered that any attempt to disambiguation of populations in the world amounts to a "racist" ideology disguised as antiracism, opening a catastrophic prospective in "this very delicate and dangerous time" as Pardis Sabeti remarks above.

    • 23 Oct, 2007
    • Posted by: Luciano Angelucci
  • That TinyURL link isn't resolving. Perhaps a direct link to the actual content would have been better?

    • 19 Nov, 2007
    • Posted by: William Gunn