Genes
October 24, 2012 1 Comment
Today I went to a ‘bite-sized lunchtime lecture’ at UCL, and courtesy of Dr Sara Hillman learnt that a low birth weight child was a predictor of future diabetes in the father, and that in turn having a father who smoked was a predictor of the baby being born with a low birth weight.
And then across the road at the Wellcome Trust had a look at a set of books mapping all 23 chromosomes containing the complete human DNA sequence:
There are 3 billion letters in the books, and if you compared your own DNA to the sample in the book you’d find only a few million differences
Marc Gawley 
What will be interesting is when the general public is told about inexpensive genetic testing. It’s already started w/ 23andme (https://www.23andme.com/) and will probably be much more ubiquitous in the future as we learn more. Hopefully, it won’t turn out like “Gattaca”.