Soon science could enable us all to run as fast as Usain Bolt

Johnjoe McFadden, Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey, discussed the Encode consortium, consisting of 442 researchers working in 32 institutes around the world, which has spent the last five years studying a representative 1% of our genome.

One of the puzzles the researchers hoped to solve was why we have so much DNA. We’ve known for decades that only a tiny fraction of it, about 2%, is codes for conventional genes. Many scientists thought that the remaining 98% was mostly junk, but the researchers found that it was instead packed full of genetic switches that tell each cell in your body which genes must be switched on or off to make a muscle, skin or nerve cell.

Professor Mcfadden said: “Few doubt that gene switching will provide the medicine of the future, but no one is sure when that future will be realised. When it comes, it will provide opportunities that go well beyond curing disease. Just as the difference between healthy and sick people may be down to gene switching, it seems likely that many of the differences between one person and another – between us and Usain Bolt, for example – may be due, similarly, to different patterns of gene switching. The kind of gene-switch medicines that will cure diseases may then be turned to therapies that will allow us all to run sub-10 second 100 metres.”