We’re going to have to be imaginative to map the genome of all species
Q. In 2003, the Human Genome Project (HGP) fully mapped the DNA of our species. What is the new project underway described as “the most ambitious proposal in the history of biology”?
A. It’s the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), aiming to generate a DNA sequence for every species alive today, all 1.5 million complex life forms, says Jonathon Keats in “Discover” magazine. The brainchild of evolution and ecology professor Harris Lewin, the project already has a head start with a collective 500,000 species from zoos, botanical gardens and places like the Smithsonian, and some 15,000 complete genomes are already published.
“Lewin thinks perhaps 500,000 more species samples can be scooped up by avid citizen scientists, but gathering the last halfmillion will take serious innovation, such as samplecollecting drones and submersibles.”
Though the tasks ahead are seemingly impossible, much the same was said of the HGP, yet demand and financial resources turned out to be great technological accelerators. “The HGP went on to contribute an estimated $1 trillion to the U.S. economy. It helped experts improve medical diagnoses and discover new drugs. EBP could bring similar gains, particularly to the world of medicine.”
Then, consider the immense expansion of knowledge: not only knowing what’s out there, from the Amazon’s canopy to the ocean floor, but also adding to basic science by determining what genetic material all complex life shares.
Q. “Patterns help us make sense of the world and words” but sometimes they lead us astray, says Anu Garg on his “A.Word.A.Day” website. To “include” is the opposite of “exclude,” but “intend” is not the opposite of “extend,” and so it goes. Can you define the following words that aren’t what they appear to be: “aggrate,” “dogmatic,” “lustrate” and “tourbillion”?
A. “Aggrate, not to be confused with “aggravate” (to annoy) comes from Italian “aggradare” and means “to please or gratify.” “Dogmatic,” from Latin “dogma” (belief) and from Greek “dogma” (opinion), is “expressing beliefs or opinions forcefully or positively as if they were true.”
Next, “lustrate” means “to purify by means of rituals” or “to remove undesirable people from an organization, especially in an abrupt or violent manner.” Ultimately from the Indo-European “leuk-“(light), it gives us words like “lunar,” “lucid,” “illuminate” and “translucent.”
Finally, from French “tourbillon” (whirlwind), from Latin “turbo” (spinning top), from Greek “turbe” (turmoil, confusion) comes “tourbillion,” defined as a “whirlwind” or “whirlpool.” No big numbers here at all.
Q. Some 3,700 years ago in a city in Jordan called Tall el-Hammam, mud brick walls of nearly all structures suddenly disappeared, leaving only stone foundations. What had happened?
A. “An exploding meteor instantaneously destroyed civilization on a 25-kilometer-wide plain called Middle Ghor,” says Bruce Bower in “Science News,” reporting on work by archaeologist Phillip Silvia. The region remained largely unpopulated for the next 600-700 years. “Up to 65,000 people lived in the area when the cosmic calamity hit.” The evidence for a meteor impact? Outer layers of many pottery pieces rapidly turned into glass at very high temperatures, and spherical mineral grains which rained down upon the devastated city appear to have been created by high-force winds.
No human deaths due to meteorite impacts have been documented in modern times, though we have had close calls with the Tunguska event in Siberia in 1908 and the one in 2013 near Chelyabinsk, Russia. But our ancestors were not so lucky. And it is sobering to consider that a meteor likely did in the dinosaurs.