G-Lers,

I find this recent article quite fascinating.  Sorry I couldn't
reproduce the entire article from my online subscription (Scientific
American)...but I guess the magazine should be available in most
bookstores.  The implications of this recent finding is far reaching;
and adds to the debate about human nature and the heriditability of
human intelligence.  Perhaps this may further help us expound on
Charles Murray's "Bell Curve" arguments about the racial factor in
socio-economic disparities amongst the Americans or yet still the
global community.

Ebou

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The Unseen Genome: Gems among the Junk

Just when scientists thought they had DNA almost figured out, they are
discovering in chromosomes two vast, but largely hidden, layers of
information that affect inheritance, development and disease.

By W. Wayt Gibbs

About 20 years ago astronomers became convinced that distant galaxies
were moving in ways that made no sense, given the laws of gravity and
the fabric of celestial objects visible in the sky. Gradually they
were forced to conclude that the universe is not as empty as it
appears, that in fact it must be dominated by some dark kind of
matter. Although no one knew what the stuff is made of or how it
works, scientists could see from its effects that it is out there. The
quest to understand dark matter (and more recently, dark energy) meant
revising or replacing theories, but it reenergized astrophysics and
cosmology.
A similar revelation is now unfolding in molecular genetics. This year
biologists celebrated the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the
double helix, and the Human Genome Project announced its completion of
a "final draft" of the DNA sequence for Homo sapiens. Scientists have
clearly mastered DNA in the lab. Yet as they compare the DNA of
distantly related species and look more closely at how chromosomes
function in living cells, they are increasingly noticing effects that
current theories cannot explain.

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