The Genome Odyssey Quotes

“approximately 80 percent of the final sequence of the Human Genome Project comes from a library known as RPCI-11, containing the DNA of an African American, while the rest comes from RPCI-13, a library made from Pieter’s own DNA.”
― Euan Angus Ashley, The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them

“Our lives are, in so many ways, shaped by the microorganisms that live on us, inside us, and around us. The estimated forty trillion bacteria in our gut, for example, help us digest everything we eat. Disturbing the healthy bacteria that colonize our gut can lead to dangerous blood infections. Today, to diagnose blood infections like those or lung infections like pneumonia, we take a sample of blood or sputum and grow the accompanying bacteria in a lab under special conditions. Eventually, the bacteria are stained and inspected under the microscope and exposed to various antibiotics to determine which ones can kill them. This process takes days. Meanwhile, we treat the patient with our “best guess” antibiotics. In the future, we will sequence those bacteria immediately and map their DNA to”
― Euan Angus Ashley, The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them

“After decades of concentrated effort, we are finally learning how to harness natural processes honed over millions of years of evolution to translate our unparalleled ability to read the genome into a new opportunity to write it and to correct the grave mistakes that turn it against us.”
― Euan Angus Ashley, The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them

“pain is actually a protective mechanism that evolved to protect us from injury.”
― Euan Angus Ashley, The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them

“My jaw nearly hit the floor. My inner voice sought clarification. So let me get this straight: This is 2010, and you sequenced your whole family? And you and your daughter have been working on the analysis? And you wondered if we could help? And, to clarify, you are talking about your seventeen-year-old daughter, and this is her high school science project?”
― Dr. Euan Angus Ashley, The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them

“is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. —HARRY S. TRUMAN None of us is as smart as all of us. —KEN BLANCHARD”
― Dr. Euan Angus Ashley, The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them

“We share 51% of our genes with yeast and 98% with chimpanzees —it is not genetics that makes us human.”
― Dr. Euan Angus Ashley, The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them