Science and Health

Expert: Don't expect genome breakthroughs yet

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-02-11 09:55

WASHINGTON – Scientists should dial down expectations about breakthroughs from mapping the human genome because it will take years to make sense of all the information, a leader of the mapping project says.

Ten years after the first full sequence of the human genome was published, medicine has not been transformed -- and no one should have expected that, argues Dr. Eric Green of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

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"Genomics is an information science and we now have information overload," Green said in a telephone interview. "Our ability to generate that information has outpaced our ability to analyze it."

While scientists have gathered "vaults of information," he said, "That doesn't mean that we will cure people or we will change clinical practice in the next 10 years."

But Green predicts the study of the human genome, called genomics, will eventually pay off in a big way.

He and other experts wrote about the 10th anniversary of the sequencing in the journals Nature and Science this week.

"Although genomics has already begun to improve diagnostics and treatments in a few circumstances, profound improvements in the effectiveness of healthcare cannot realistically be expected for many years," Green and colleague Mark Guyer wrote in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.