Genome power is about to sweep world: Nobel laureate
Baku, June 30 (AZERTAC). NOBEL laureate Barry Marshall plans to become the first Australian to post his own full genetic code, or genome, on the internet, even though it does reveal unsettling insights.
His nearly-completed six-billion-piece code shows he is at nearly three times higher lifetime risk of macular degeneration and double for testicular cancer and for Alzheimer`s disease.
``If I develop Alzheimer`s disease, that`s bad luck, but it`s not going to worry me,`` says Professor Marshall.
``It is not going to be long before every Australian will be carrying their genome on a smart card.
``This is going to be an enormous and unprecedented help to their health,`` says the doctor, who swallowed a laboratory culture to prove that bacteria caused stomach ulcers.
It was an idea that confounded the medical orthodoxy but ultimately won him and Dr Robin Warren the Nobel prize.
At the National Press Club yesterday, Professor Marshall predicted that in a decade we would have our genome on our smart phones and be able to routinely gain access to those of prospective boyfriends or girlfriends.
People would get used to the swings and roundabouts of knowing their genetic make-up as the benefits to their health became clear and treatment got better-targeted.
He told of his wife`s concern about her own mother`s macular degeneration, which were allayed when a genome scan found she did not have her mother`s gene for the blinding condition.
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