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Post-Genomic Science & Society: Getting our fangs into omics science and its implications. Christina Holmes, Siobhan Carlson, and Fiona McDonald. Environment to Genetic Explanation Shift?. Explanatory power: the power to explain why things are the way they are Manipulatory power:
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Post-Genomic Science & Society:Getting our fangs into omics science and its implications Christina Holmes, Siobhan Carlson, and Fiona McDonald
Explanatory power: • the power to explain why things are the way they are • Manipulatory power: • providing new ways to manipulate the material world. • E.g. new techniques, practices, or technologies
You’re Studying Proteomics?What’s That? • Proteomics: The large scale study of proteins, particularly their structures and functions • Methods: Qualitative interviews with proteomics scientists and participant observation of proteomics conferences – largely in Canada & Australia & the international organization’s conferences (HUPO)
Complexity “So, if you look at DNA, there’s 4 bases and there’s methylation, which is you know like on/off switches, on the DNA. So you know, there’s 5. And then with proteins there’s 20 amino acids and 100 post-translational modifications, and there’s a lot more structure to protein. So, there’s probably two orders of magnitude more complexity in proteomics. But I mean you don’t need to understand that complete system to come up with something useful, right?” – Proteomics science
Genomics vs. Proteomics “Genomics in a sense has a head start, so that can be seen as a barrier. If someone’s ahead of you, if you’re both trying to get to the same finish line, that’s a barrier in the sense that the amount of data they can collect is much more, and the tools are a little bit better developed. It’s also a barrier in the sense that like a lot of new technologies, genomics was overhyped. So now there’s disdain for anything –omics related for a lot of people” – Proteomics scientist
Reaching for Genomics’ Explanatory & Manipulatory Power… • HUPO (Human Proteome Organisation) has launched the HPP (Human Proteome Project) • Main branch of the project – organized around chromosomes • Health & disease branch exists – but less well developed
Society & omics research • Nature of the science is potentially changing, making reductionism more difficult • Will this result in new kinds of relationships/uses in society? • Or with these sciences never achieve strong explanatory power?