The following snippet is from today's NY Times. Because the completion of the
first pass at decoding the human genome was announced yesterday, the
questions are already arising: Of what value is any of this?

One answer to that question appears today's Times. While this bit of
information has been well known to anyone involved with biology for some time
now, if it becomes part of the general discussion, that can only be to the
good and worth every penny so far invested in the project.

The complete article is at:


http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/062700sci-genome-nature.html

=======================================

For some, the emerging details of the genome sequence are most fascinating
for what they say about the fraternity between the human species and all
other creatures on earth.

"Looking at the genome, and taking it as a kind of image of who we are,
places us squarely with the rest of nature," said Jon Seger, an evolutionary
biologist and geneticist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

"You can see the same genes in flies, worms, monkeys mice and people. It's
evolution laid out for all to see. There's nothing peculiar or distinctive
about us."

Except, perhaps, for our species-wide homogeneity.

Some scientists emphasize the genetic fraternity of humanity. We may be
genomically similar to mice and monkeys, but it turns out that we are
extraordinarily similar to each other: there are far fewer genetic
differences, or polymorphisms, among different peoples, and populations of
peoples, than are observed in individual members of other species, including
our ape relatives.

This discovery, scientists say, has a profound implications for our
understanding of the various human "races." Kelly Owens and Mary-Claire King,
geneticists at the University of Washington in Seattle, argued last year in
the journal Science that whatever genetic differences exist between, say,
Africans and Europeans, or Asians and Aborigines, they are likely to be
literally skin-deep.

The researchers describe how the recent analysis of the so-called
melanocortin-stimulating hormone receptor gene, which is involved in melanin
production, indicates that small discrepancies in this receptor gene appear
to account for most of the variations observed in human skin and hair color
and texture. If true, they write, then variation at a single, tiny genetic
locus in charge of "superficial traits" has been "the cause of enormous
suffering."

========================================

Wirt Atmar