How much information can we get out of DNA ?

Question

Lets say I give a to rated scientist my DNA

Can he tell you what I look like ? How tall I am What sort of inteligence and character I have ?

How about my diet or or or


How much info do we get out of a DNA strand ?

Humble Simple Man

I believe this I just wonder if we can handle it

Answer 1

Given enough time and the technology to understand DNA, a scientist could probably tell a lot about you.

Appearance: he can tell you how you'd look without the influence of the environment. I'll bet, however, that by studying the particular genes that have been turned on, he could tell if you were tanned, if you'd lost a finger, how brittle your nails are, your weight, etc.

Diet: again, he'd have to look at which metabolic genes are turned on. If you have lots of sucrase, he could guess that you eat a lot of sucrose (sugar). Diet is already fairly easy to guess based on your leavings and stomach contents. But those are somewhat invasive.

As said above, we don't know how much information DNA tells us. It has given us clues to evolution and relatedness among species and among individuals. It shows us where some diseases come from - genetic diseases, like Alzheimer's, Klinefelter's syndrome, Down's syndrome, etc. It will tell us about many more diseases as we get more of the sequence of the human genome. Eventually, DNA will tell us how to improve ourselves in order to lengthen life expectancy, think faster and perform physical tasks with more ease. Who know what else it will tell us?

Interesting question, by the way.

Answer 2

Well if your talking about how much is possible, as opposed to how much we can right now.....
You can get any characteristic of a person i.e. (eye color, skin color, physical features) and you can get a model of the persons brain potential and how it functions, i.e.(high thrill seeker do to certain levels of brain neurotransmitters)
Pretty much anything....in a basic of form
Things that are exact like, finger prints, body composition, current knowledge and behavior cannot be found out as these are products of environmental influence

Answer 3

The actual answer to this question is "unknown at this time", but so much information can be gleaned from the proper analysis of DNA that it is staggering - genetic risk of heart disease, onset of different types of cancer, resistance to certain types of cancer, what genetic illnesses you may have (and not even know yet), how susceptible to Alzheimer's Disease... it would fill several books.

Answer 4

the genome is an organism's potential. so i'd assume (with this fantastical technology) that DNA would be able to tell an agency EVERYTHING about you (given an optimal environment)...of course it would be able to tell physical characteristics, maybe your taste preferences, or even your learning potential.


have you ever seen the movie GATTACA? that's probably what it would be like...

Answer 5

Well he/she could find out your family origins. Because of the human genome project scientis have been able to identify all the genes in the human DNA. they could take you dna to compare and see what abilites ( hormone production ex insulin) and other things but finding intelligence and such might be hard to do. not impossible they probaly could but it would be very hard becuaes they would have to compare it to hundered of other genes to see what you have.

Answer 6

We are on the tip of the iceberg.

Infinite info is possible.

There are infinite things we do not yet know about DNA.