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ROBERT KRULWICH: When I look at this—and these are the. But when scientist Eric Lander looks at this he sees stories. ERIC LANDER (Whitehead Institute/MIT): The genome is a storybook. And you could take it to bed.
A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, and read a different story in. ROBERT KRULWICH: This is the story of one of the greatest. For the past ten years, scientists all over the world have been. DNA. And. now, finally, the "Human Genome" has been decoded. J. CRAIG VENTER (President, Celera Genomics): We're at the moment.
This is what we wanted to do, you know? We're now. examining and interpreting the genetic code. FRANCIS COLLINS (National Human Genome Research Institute): This. ROBERT KRULWICH: And what it's telling us is so surprising and.
Fifty percent of the genes in a banana are in. ERIC LANDER: How different are you from a banana? ROBERT KRULWICH: I feel.. I feel I can say this with some.
ERIC LANDER: You may feel different.. ROBERT KRULWICH: I eat a banana. ERIC LANDER: All the machinery for replicating your DNA, all the. ROBERT KRULWICH: So what does any of this information have to. Perhaps more than we could possibly imagine. Which one of us. will get cancer or arthritis or Alzheimer's?
Will there be cures? Will parents. in the future be able to determine their children's genetic.
ERIC LANDER: We've opened a box here that has got a huge amount of. It is the key to understanding disease and in the long. But having opened it, we're also going to be very. ROBERT KRULWICH: Yes, some of the information you are about to. On the other hand, some of it I think.
I'm Robert Krulwich. And tonight we will not only report the latest. Human Genome project, you will meet the people who made. And as you watch our program on the human genome, we will be raising a. And we'd like to have your thoughts. So please, if you will, log on to NOVA's Website—it's. The results will be immediately.
We'll be right back. Major funding for NOVA is provided by the Park Foundation, dedicated to. This program is funded in part by the Northwestern Mutual Foundation. Some. people already know Northwestern Mutual can help plan for your children's.
Are you there yet? Northwestern Mutual Financial Network. Scientific achievement is fueled by the simple desire to make things clear. Sprint PCS is proud to support NOVA. Major funding for this program is provided by the National Science.
Foundation, America's investment in the future. And by the Corporation for. Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like. Thank You. ROBERT KRULWICH: To begin, let's go back four and some billion.
That speck did something that has gone. It wrote a message. It was a chemical message. The message has passed from the very first organism. It's more elaborate now, of course, but that message, very simply, is the.
And here is that message contained in this stunning little. DNA. You've seen it in this form, the.
DNA, I wondered, "What does it look like when it's raw, you know. So I asked an expert. ERIC LANDER: DNA has a reputation for being such a mystical. It's actually goop. So this here's DNA.
ROBERT KRULWICH: Professor Eric Lander is a geneticist at. MIT's Whitehead Institute. ERIC LANDER: It's very, very long strands of molecules, these double. DNA, which, when you get them all together, just look like little. ROBERT KRULWICH: And these strands were literally pulled from.
ERIC LANDER: Whoever contributed this DNA, you can tell from this. Alzheimer's disease, you can. And there's. probably about 2.
And it's really incredibly unlikely that you can. But that's DNA for you. That apparently is the secret. ROBERT KRULWICH: And already DNA has told us things that no. It turns out that human beings have only twice as. Now how can that be?
We are such complex and. DNA also. tells us that we are more closely related to worms and to yeast than most of us. But how do you read what's inside a molecule?
Well, if it's DNA, if you. Each step is made up of two chemicals. They come always in pairs, called.
C and G, or T and A for short. This is, step by step, a. ROBERT KRULWICH: We're all familiar with this thing, this. ERIC LANDER: .. double helix.. ROBERT KRULWICH: .. First of all, I'm. DNA molecule. Is this, by the way, what it.
ERIC LANDER: Well, give or take. I mean, a cartoon version, yeah. ROBERT KRULWICH: Cartoon version? ERIC LANDER: A little like that or so, yeah.
ROBERT KRULWICH: So there are.. ERIC LANDER: Oh yes, stuck in the nucleus of your cell. ROBERT KRULWICH: Now how small is this, if in a real DNA. ERIC LANDER: Oh golly.. ROBERT KRULWICH: Look at this. He's asking for. help.
ERIC LANDER: This distance is about from.. ROBERT KRULWICH: That's one billionth of a meter when it's.
ERIC LANDER: Well no, it's curled up some like that but you see it's. You can't curl it up too much because these little negatively. I'm going to break. ROBERT KRULWICH: No, don't break my molecule.. ERIC LANDER: You got this. And then it's folded up like this. And then. those are folded up on top of each other.
And so, in fact, if you were to. DNA it would run, oh, I don't know, thousands and. ROBERT KRULWICH: But the main thing about this is the. If I knew it was A and T and C and C and G. G and A.. ERIC LANDER: No, no.
It's not G and G, it's G and C. ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm sorry, whatever the rules are of the. I could read each of the individual ladders, I might find. ERIC LANDER: Well, of your children. This is what you pass to your. You know people have known for 2. Well it's because you must pass them something, some instructions.
And the only way you pass it to them is in these sentences. That's it. ROBERT KRULWICH: And to show you the true power of this. As and Ts and Cs and Gs and the classic double spiral. And. then it starts the mysterious process that creates a healthy new baby. And the. interesting thing is that every human baby, every baby born, is 9.
So the tiniest differences in our genes can be hugely important, can. Cracking the code of those minuscule differences in DNA that influence. Human Genome Project is all about. Since 1. 99. 0. scientists all over the world in university and government labs, have been. As, Ts, Gs, and Cs of. They predicted it would take at least 1.
That was partly because in. It took 1. 0 years.
Another 1. 0 years. Huntington's disease. Fifteen years to find one of the. One letter at a time, painfully. ROBERT WATERSTON: One, two, three, four, five.. ROBERT KRULWICH: ..
ROBERT WATERSTON (DNA mapping pioneer): .. Cs in a row. NARRATOR: .. We asked Dr. Robert Waterston, a pioneer in mapping DNA, to show us the way. ROBERT WATERSTON: The original ladders for DNA sequence, we actually. It's. horrendous. ROBERT KRULWICH: And we haven't mentioned the hardest part. This here, magnified 5.
DNA, chromosome 1. Now. if you look inside you will find, of course, hundreds of millions of As, and. Cs, and Ts and Gs, but it turns out that only about one percent of them are. These are the genes that scientists are searching for.
So. somewhere in this dense chemical forest are genes involved in deafness. Alzheimer's, cancer, cataracts. But where? This is such a maze scientists need. But at the old pace that would take close to forever.
ROBERT WATERSTON: C and then an A. ROBERT KRULWICH: And then came the revolution. In the last ten. years the entire process has been computerized. That cost hundreds of millions. But now, instead of decoding a few hundred letters by hand in a.
ROBERT COOK- DEEGAN (National Research Council): This is something. Everybody knows that. Everybody, when the. Genome project was being born, was consciously aware of their role in. ROBERT KRULWICH: Getting the letters out is.. What's your. metaphor? ERIC LANDER: Oh, golly gee.
I mean, you can have very high falutin'. This is basically a parts list. Blueprints. and all these fancy.. It's just a parts list. It's a parts list with a lot of. If you take an airplane, a Boeing 7.
I think it has like 1. If I gave you a parts list for the Boeing 7. You'd know 1. 00,0. On the other hand, I bet you wouldn't know. And I bet you wouldn't know why it flies. Well we're in. the same boat.
We now have a parts list. That's what the human genome project. If you want to understand the plane you. Of course you'd be crazy not to start with the parts list. ROBERT KRULWICH: And one reason it's so important to.
DNA, just one single letter. Allison and Tim Lord are parents of two- year- old Hayden. TIM LORD (Father of son with Tay Sachs): The two things that I. Hayden, which a lot of people got from him right from. I thought, very funny.
I mean he loved to. And this was later when he was. And so he and I. would just crack each other up. ROBERT KRULWICH: Hayden seemed to be developing normally for. Allison began to notice that some things were not. ALLISON LORD (Mother of son with Tay Sachs): I was very anxious. Hayden. I sensed that something was not the same.
I would see. my friends changing the diaper of their child who was around the same age. Hayden didn't do that. ROBERT KRULWICH: Doctors told them that Hayden was just. But by the time he turned a year old, it was clear. He never crawled, he never talked, he never ate. TIM LORD: I remember the last time he laughed. And I took a trip with.
We came back and I propped him up right here on the couch. I was sitting next to him and he just kind of threw his head back and.
And that the last time he. That's really hard. ROBERT KRULWICH: It turned out that Hayden had Tay Sachs. DR. EDWIN KOLODNY (NYU, Department of Neurology): What happens is. So at six months a child should be turning. ROBERT KRULWICH: Tay Sachs begins at one infinitesimal spot on. DNA ladder, when just one letter goes wrong.
Say this cluster of atoms is. That's it. But since genes create proteins, that error creates a problem in. But. now the protein doesn't work. So fat builds up, swells the brain, and. And all of this is the. DNA. DR. EDWIN KOLODNY: In most cases it's a single base change.
As we say, a. letter difference.