So the human genome turns out to consist of just 30,000 genes (or thereabouts). But does it matter? Apparently so. Running the genome sequence story on Sunday - a day ahead of the press conferences around the world - the UK's Observer newspaper told its readers that 'having fewer genes is good for you'. The fewer genes we humans turn out to have, so the Observer's thinking goes, the greater freedom from nature we have and the more influenced we are by non-genetic factors.
Discovering the true number of human genes is scientifically important. But this apparent urge to read some greater meaning into what is little more than biological fact ultimately does us no favours. The process of working out to what extent humans are shaped by genetic or non-genetic (diet, exercise, environment etc) factors is not helped by knowing how many genes we have. Those who are convinced that genes rule our lives will not be dissuaded by the discovery that the number of genes we have is about a third of what was originally thought.
Perhaps this is an inevitable consequence of the public appeal of human genome research. We're all fascinated and want to hear about new developments, but our ability as laymen to interpret new findings is severely limited. Hence, the journalists have to concentrate upon elements of the findings that would be most comprehensible to us. Gene number is a concept that we can get our heads around, but the vagaries of gene function are not.
All this talk of the human gene sequence as the book of life or the human blueprint is, in many ways, equally unhelpful. Books and blueprints might be useful analogies (although one columnist rejected 'blueprint', observing that the relationship between a blueprint and the building is clear - unlike that of the gene sequence and the human body). But books and blueprints are metaphors for human life at the level of the cell - not life in any meaningful sense. A full understanding of what shapes our minds and imaginations, what motivates us and inspires us cannot be found in our genes, whether we have 30,000 or 120,000 of them.
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