What is a Gene? No One Knows.
If someone tells you with confidence “Let me tell you what gene is,” reply with confidence, “I doubt you know exactly what gene is.”
What genome science thought were the most important things for decades turned out to be the least important as we just now starting to understand the complexity of a human gene.
In our exciting work as part of the Artificial Intelligence and Genomic Diagnostics International Working Group (WG-AIGD), we’ve learned that the smartest genome researchers in the world don’t know what the gene is and they don’t know how it works. They are just opening up this whole new world, with the help of supercomputers and the AI. That’s where WellAI’s expertise comes in handy.
Did you know that plants and even mammals can re-write their DNA with RNA? How is that possible? That breaks the laws of the Central Dogma of Biology.
Well, with the help of AI, as enormous amounts of data are coming in daily, we’re discovering new frontiers that could change our knowledge of biology completely.
The conventional concept of ‘DNA-to-RNA-to-Protein’ is not right! RNA can rewrite DNA, and it happens more often than you think. For example, we are learning that both parents can have certain DNA, but their offspring can have a different DNA. There are things outside of DNA that changed it.
Roderic Guido, a prominent genome scientist at the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona says, “The degree of complexity we’ve seen was not anticipated.”
As scientists, we need to be humble. We need to accept the fact that without the machines and computer models it would be infinitely hard to figure out the genome complexity.
In our ongoing educational series, Daniel Satchkov, head of machine learning at WellAI, briefly talks about the gene and the ever-changing genome science.
We are at the very beginning of understanding applications of mathematics and data science in medicine and other fields of life!
Stay healthy! Stay knowledgeable about your health.
WellAI Team