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Published online 10 October 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/455845a
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Outcry at scale of inheritance project
NIH launches multi-million-dollar epigenomics programme.
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) handed out the first payments in a multi-million-dollar project to explore epigenomics last month. But some researchers are voicing concerns about the scientific and economic justification for this latest 'big biology' venture.
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There is another way efficacious and reliable in ameliorating INHERITED modifications, upon which biophysical semeiotic constitutions (Google.com, about 823 responses!) are based on. I referr to a new bedside tool in reducing today's serious epidemics. Clinical, no expensive, Primary Prevention of most common and serious epidemics, as diabetes and malignancy, can nowadays be performed on very large scale. If you see www.nature.com (e.g., http://blogs.nature.com/nm/spoonful/2008/04/stress_as_a_ther... regarding cancer primary prevention, and as regards diabetes: http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/02/confusio... ), you'll realize that it's possible to perform an efficacious primary prevention on very large scale, in individuals regognized since birth as involved by both a well-defined biophysical semeiotic constitution and related Inherited Real Risk (See www.semeioticabiofisica.it).
I believe epigenetics is the most quantitative aspect of genetics which explains must developmental phenomenons including sex determination. It should therefore be encouraged. I see a justification to the funding if it will also help develop new technological infrastructure that could enhance our capacity to identify cells on the basis of differential molecular content. For instance distinguishing in picture a cancerous cell from a healthy one, or a germ cell with sex gene in a state of male activation from a germ cell with sex gene in female state of expression.
The major argument presented against the NIH is the importance of elucidating the role of transcription factors' effects on chromatin form(epigenetic changes). However, if one was to look at the grant money for genetics of transcription factors vs. epigenetics, the latter is obviously underfunded. When a new promising topic spawns in science, it often means reducing the funding to all other research areas.If this did not happen however there would be no progress.
Madahani et al's argument is biased in favor of transcriptional network. Interestingly, the authors have also brought in the issue of consortium versus individual scientist driven research. They are vehemently in favor of free market rather than central planning. We can not compare apples and oranges. We need NIH's Epigenome project in particular and Big Science projects in general as much as we need individual researcher based in-depth analysis of gene regulation and bottom-up science. A major criticism of NIH project in Madhani et al's article is that ... "merely cataloging modification patterns offers comparatively little new or useful information. We already know that most genes are associated with one of a few patterns of chromatin modifications and that the patterns themselves do not tell us how that gene is regulated or how its expression state is inherited". I would like to draw a parallel here with the Big Science HapMap project. They also merely catalogued single nucleotide variations at genome scale. Most of these variations are expectedly neutral with no functional consequences. Nevertheless, cataloguing such variations proved rewarding in identifying genes conferring susceptibility to common diseases. In brief, Epigenome project is a right step.