Throughout history, innovators have envisioned a better world and worked to perfect their craft in order to progress towards that ideal. It’s been shown time and time again that ideas spark inspiration, theory, experiments, and eventually that gradual scientific process inevitably leads to change. As a Biology major with a specialization in developmental genetics, I am especially interested in how we can learn from DNA, also referred to as the “blueprint of life”, to make ourselves and our world exceptional. The first method of sequencing DNA was developed in the 1970’s by Fred Sanger; this came to be known as Sanger Sequencing ("DNA Sequence Assembly"). This method uses naturally occurring DNA synthesis, which proceeds from the …show more content…
We’re entering uncharted territory and therefore we must be careful in how we deal with any unanticipated consequences that may result. Due to the various applications of genome sequencing, there are bound to be ethical concerns. For example, if a young girl was to test positive for a mutated BRCA gene, her doctor may feel it’s necessary to take preemptive action against this finding. However, this mutation just increases the likelihood that breast cancer will develop; it doesn’t mean she’s destined to have it. Treating a healthy child as a patient before a disease even develops can be viewed as, “premature, misleading, and damaging” (Shuster, 2013). This example brings up a similar ethical question; should a doctor inform a patient of an incidental finding, if the patient only asked to be screened for disease “X”? It’s inevitable that there will be many grey areas when it comes to genome sequencing, which makes it necessary for doctors to be able to interpret and sensitively relay information to …show more content…
The fact that we have learned so much in the last decade can make it seem as though we’re progressing toward science-fiction like times. However, it’s important to keep in mind that what we perceive as being normal now, used to not be. For example, not too long ago if you wanted to talk with a distant relative, as my grandmother told me, as a young girl she and her family had to use a shared landline and potentially wait hours for the party line to not be in use. Nowadays, we can make a private call, and even Skype as well as look up information in a matter of seconds. For those who were born with this technology already accessible, like millennials, DNA sequencing is not such a crazy concept because it has already become