Korean Genome Map

Korean Genome Map: "12-05-2008 17:18

Nation Takes One Step Closer to Bioengineering Frontier

Good news is increasingly hard to find, but Korean scientists' successful sequencing of the human genome apparently belongs to it.

It is not just because the subject of the latest genome sequencing, Kim Seong-jin, is only the fifth such person in the world, following two Americans, one Chinese and one Nigerian, but because the nation has long been smarting from the shock of disgraced cloning expert, Hwang Woo-suk, and is ready to start again.

Laymen cannot know all the details and significance of a specific achievement in the up-to-the-second science of genetic engineering, but experts say some countries or corporations will be able to supply the entire genetic map of individuals in USB memories in as early as 2013 and for as little as $1,000. Welcome to the era of preventive or ``tailor-made'' medical services.

These advances are not without their critics and adverse side effects of course. Foreign media carried reports recently about an actress who had her breasts removed as she possessed the gene that made her susceptible to that form of cancer. Some Korean women were immediately beginning to ask for similar operations, embarrassing medical doctors. Genes are not the only determinant for the occurrence of the disease, which takes place for various other reasons, including environmental and individual differences.

Another side effect is possible discrimination in employment, marriage and most probably in insurance coverage against people with problematic genes.

Based on new research suggesting that scientists may be able to recreate an extinct woolly mammoth from its long-frozen DNA, some are hastily predicting the film ``Jurassic Park'' turning into reality. Others go further: By citing the production of an artificial genome of bacteria by U.S. scientists last year, they even are talking as if the ``Brave New World'' of Aldous L. Huxley could be just around the corner.

All this is still idle talk, as some local scientists are rather cautious in acknowledging the accomplishment of Kim and his team _ consisting of Gachon University and the Korean Bioinformation Center (KOBIC) researchers _ questioning whether they have undergone sufficient sequencing analysis to back it up.

Caution may do no harm, but most Koreans must be hoping the latest feat will serve as an occasion for the nation's bioengineering sector to accelerate its research to catch up with the United States and other front-runners in what some economic experts say could emerge as the ``second semiconductor industry.''

The IT industry was crucial in Korea's overcoming the first financial crisis of 11 years ago. It would not be too much if Koreans hope _ albeit somewhat prematurely _ the bio industry would prove to be equally helpful in tiding over the current crisis