On the edge of a biological cusp

Thought Leadership

'Imagine being a table to re-writ the genetic kode of any organism including tumans.'  This sentence obviously makes no sense. Now imagine these spelling mistakes occurred in your genetic code (genome). Your genome is made up of a four letter alphabet, consists of three billion letters and resides in every one of the cells in your body. It defines who you are. To put this in perspective, the Complete Works of William Shakespeare is based on a 26 letter alphabet and has about six million letters. Of the three billion letters in your genome, roughly 10 million can change between individuals. These changes can have no apparent effect, result in different eye color, for example, or cause disease. There can be additions and deletions to these three billion that can also cause disease. Now imagine trying to find and fix these typos in your 500 copies of Shakespeare. Hard enough with a 26 letter alphabet; near impossible with a four letter alphabet.