Words about science and hiking
As you gathered from this post, I am skeptical that genomics will have much impact on improving human health. An immediate objection to this skepticism would be that genomic-driven advances have simply not had enough time to work their way into tangible treatments. It has only been 15 years since the first human genome was published. Read More …
Antibiotics have been around for a long time now, and we know which bacterial proteins they attack. ß-lactams like amoxicillin inhibit the enzyme that crosslinks peptidoglycans in bacterial cell walls. Fluoroquinolones like ciprofloxacin bind DNA topoisomerases and prevent them from coiling and uncoiling bacterial chromosomes. But so what? How does blocking these processes actually kill Read More …
There’s no doubt that the emergence of genomics was a huge scientific breakthrough. It supercharged research in any number of disciplines, and essentially created new ones such as microbiomics. But it hasn’t done the one thing it was supposed to do: transform the diagnosis and treatment of disease. The first genome was sequenced in 2001. Many Read More …