Best Small Cos. That's great news for those hoping to develop moneymaking drugs from the gene hunt. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, listens to Eric Lander, a scientist at the Whitehead Institute and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That assessment, made in a study in tomorrow's issue of Nature , should also remind investors that the path from gene to drug is fraught with obstacles. And the study may raise questions about ethnicity and genetics.
Genes are essentially chemical recipes for all the parts of the human body.
SNPs are like single-letter spelling differences. These tiny alternative spellings account for most of differences among people. They are a big part of why we look different from one another, and they also may explain why some people are more likely to get asthma, hypertension or diabetes. So far, more than a million such SNPs have been found by scientists who make their work publicly available. This would be daunting, perhaps impossible.