I
was reading a transcript of Dr. Jim Watson’s (Nobel Prize winner for the
discovery of DNA structure) discussion with some Postdoc fellows. I liked one
of his suggestions. During postdoctoral
research, which is the most important phase of the career of a scientist (in
current academic world), one should identify and focus on the most important
problems facing one’s chosen field of study. He suggested them to identify the
five most important questions in the field and work on them. I have decided to
take that suggestion very seriously and identify some of the important problems
that are interesting to me.
While
thinking about it I realized something important. Although I have an idea about
what could be areas of potential interest I do not have a clear question. The
key is to nail down the question. One
obvious problem is the link between genotype and phenotype. Don’t run away! As
you know we humans are highly related to each other. Well, related is a
relative term. You are more related to me than you are related to a chimpanzee
(unless you are a chimpanzee who accidentally happened to read this blog while
browsing the net about the ‘closest place to find organic bananas’!) but you are more related your parents than you
are to me (Unless you are…. you got the point, right?). Any random individuals have
99.9% same DNA sequence. But this tiny (0.1%, more or less) difference made
Einstein an Einstein and me not an Einstein. So the question is what are the key sequence (genotype) differences that contribute to the outward appearances
(phenotype). Where are these differences located in our genome? Are the genetic differences the only
reason of phenotype differences or are there epigenetic (beyond DNA sequence)
differences that contribute to it?
They
may look like several questions, but they are not. How can I frame them into a
single broad question? And, of course, what are the other 4 major questions. I am sorry that the title is little misleading. I still do not have all the five questions. But the
quest has only just begun.
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