2012 National DNA Day Online Chatroom Transcript
This is just one question from an archive of the National DNA Day Moderated Chat held in April 2012. The NHGRI Director and many genomics experts from across NHGRI took questions from students, teachers and the general public on topics ranging from basic genomic research, to the genetic basis of disease, to ethical questions about genetic privacy.
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In sports like track some kids can run forever with not much training and others train a lot but don't make it anywhere why is that?
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Shawn Burgess, Ph.D.:
I currently study developmental processes and their relation to human genetic disease.
The answer is genetics. The differences in human DNA between one person and another is relatively small (we are all 99.9% identical at the DNA level), but those small differences are responsible for all the differences we see between different human beings, from height to skin color, to how fast someone can run. Think of all the different kinds of dogs, they are all "dogs" but by breeding them in a certain way, different characteristics like speed or size were exaggerated creating different dog breeds. The same principles apply to humans (without the selective breeding part). |
| Peru High School in IN (11th grade student) |
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