Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Common sense for our genomes

Nature volume 449, pages 783–784 (2007)Cite this article

A personal DNA sequence is not yet practically useful. But it could be, argues Steven E. Brenner, if we had the right resources available to interpret genomes.

It is telling that Venter said he learned about the cardiac disease gene in a newspaper report. Put simply, even we in the scientific community can't easily come to grips with what we know. The effects of gene variations are scattered in hundreds of databases, across hundreds of interpretative reports in clinical laboratories, and among millions of manuscripts and patent applications. And although some papers discuss the precise effects of a single DNA base change, many analyses offer simple rules of thumb rather than specific guidance.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Steven E. Brenner is at the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, 111 Koshland Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.,

    Steven E. Brenner

Authors
  1. Steven E. Brenner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

Join the discussion at http://www.GenomeCommons.org

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Brenner, S. Common sense for our genomes. Nature 449, 783–784 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/449783a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/449783a

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing