Is emigrating to Mars a requirement given the development of the current Genetic techniques?
Is emigrating to Mars a requirement given the development of the current Genetic techniques?
What is the relationship between emigrating to Mars and the modern development of Life Sciences? 99% of people would state “it seems that the emigration to the Red Planet has nothing to do with the development of current Life Sciences.” Is it true?
In order to answer this question, we have to consider a very important question first: why do we need to emigrate to outer space? What is the driving force in exploring Mars?
We can list thousands of reasons in which humankind would do such a thing and this could include exploring new scientific fronts, the curiosity of human nature to discover new things or to demonstrate leadership in the field of space exploration. However, what we can see is that since the industrial and digital revolution, the size of our human population has experienced a sudden and rapid increase in the last one hundred years and will continue to grow exponentially in the future as a result of increased birth rate, decreased infant mortality rate, and improved life expectancy.
It is expected that the Earth can accommodate 10 billion people in the condition that we all live in poverty. The World Population Clock is increasing 10 to 20 every second and soon human beings on Earth would need to confront one problem: how can we handle the surplus of human beings on this Earth? At this point in time, we may not see the urgency to emigrate to Mars as people can still enjoy life brought to us by technological progress.
Imagine this scenario, what if the life expectancy of human beings can be extended another 200 years or more as a result of the development of the Genetic techniques? Someone would make a joke of me when they hear such a theory, and they would probably say: “How could people live so long, dude?” Well, if you have ever watched a video from a Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine Randy W. Schekman, you would likely change your mind.
So far, we already understand why it is a requirement for us to emigrate to Mars given the current development of life science. Let me organize it for you for clarity purposes. Due to the development of the Human Variant Genome project (hereinafter referring to X Genomics Project), scientists, research institutions and government agencies and departments from all over the world will devote their resources to cure such a fatal disease at the gene level or at the level of base pairs. The life expectancy and life quality of the individual would be increased greatly, and we will be confronted with another kind of population explosion in the future due to the elongated lifespan of an individual.
In order to understand the definition and purpose of the X Genomics Project, one should acquire the basic knowledge about the Human Genome Project. The Human Genome Project was an international scientific research project with the purpose of determining the sequence of nucleotide base pairs that make up human DNA and identifying and mapping all of the genes of the human genome from both a physical and a functional standpoint. It seems significant, but in reality, it has nothing to do with the individual genome since the finished human genome is a mosaic, not representing any specific individual.
Taking into account the similarity of human genome among individuals, which is 99.9%, the Human Genome Project has made great progress in recording the human’s gene and is undoubtedly one of the greatest scientific endeavors of the 20th century. However, these 0.1% variations are what determine our external appearance, disease, lifespan, physical ability, intelligence and skin color etc. How could we spot the 0.1% difference in the gene pool which includes billions of pieces? As a meaningful analogy, how could you spot the star of HD 196737 in a dark night among billions of stars in the sky? This is the problem that the X Genomics Project concerns, which focuses not on that 99.9% similarity of the genome but on the 0.1% difference known as the area of variation, so people can use the information indicated by the 0.1% difference to cure the genetic diseases, elongate people’s lifespan and improve their life quality.
Hearing of this, some people might say “Great, so let’s embark on the day of the X Genomics Project.”
One moment, please! Now imagine this scenario, if you have the genes that can make you vulnerable to a tumor or a psychological issue which can lead to a negative effect on your career or life and a potential evildoer steals your personal data and exposes it to the public, what would happen? It definitely can cause a disaster to your life and career.
Here we see a typical example of how gene information can be leaked and how it can affect our lives. You can probably think of more examples/ scenarios of how individual gene information can be leaked or stolen.
So the real question would be how we can protect our information from being stolen, hampered, or modified? Thanks to the blockchain technique with the features of data storage security, decentralization, openness, and transparency, it brings us a solution to store, transfer and use gene information without being concerned with the security and safety of the gene data.
Combined with the blockchain infrastructure, the privacy and reliability of data sources, along with the security, legitimacy, and valuation of data retrieval is guaranteed. The isolated human genome data can be turned into a unified one. The X Genomics Project can bring Life Science to a new high, a high that humankind could never have imagined before. With the X Genomics Project, scientists and gene doctors can analyze more of the genome by accessing medically relevant regions that are unmappable with only short-reads such as those located in NGS dead zones which allows for a more complete understanding of human health and disease. , Furthermore, it can identify changes that occur on maternal or paternal haplotypes and confidently call variants in cis or transto better decipher the mechanisms underlying inherited disorders and find answers to an individual’s complex biological questions effortlessly and rapidly with cutting-edge and intuitive software.
Due to the contribution of the X Genomics Project, one day you might say “Hello, dude, I have not seen you for 158 years, have you lived well over in Mars? My grand grand-daughter really misses you!”
See you guys in the next century.
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