Duke - Nov - Dec 2010 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/issue/nov-dec-2010 en Differences in Division https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/differences-division <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 670px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="240" width="670" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/111210_depgaz_11.png" /><p class="caption-text"><span class="media-h-caption" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;"><strong style="text-shadow: none !important;">From one to two</strong>: late stage of HeLa human cell division. Credit:</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> Dr. Richard Kessel & Dr. Gene Shih/Visuals Unlimited/Corbis</span></p></div></div></div><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">While scientists have spent the past forty years describing the intricate series of events that occur when one mammalian cell divides into two, they still haven’t agreed on how the process begins. There are two seemingly contradictory theories, which now may be reconciled by a third theory proposed by Duke’s Lingchong You, assistant professor of biomedical engineering. The theory could provide insights into cancer, which is marked by uncontrolled cell proliferation.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">During proliferation, the DNA within the nucleus of a cell makes a copy of itself, and the cell then splits into two, each half taking with it an exact copy of the genetic makeup of the cell. One of the two prevailing models for explaining cell division says that the beginning of division for any specific cell is just a random event. The second model assumes that there are intrinsic differences that enable some cells to start the process earlier than others.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">You’s team found that a specific gene circuit known as Rb-E2F has the ability to tell some cells to start dividing while at the same time telling other cells to lie low. You’s team began the experiments by taking an identical population of mouse cells and then starving them of nutrients—essentially putting them in a state of hibernation. The cells were then given nutrients, which caused them to start dividing. Researchers then watched to see which cells started the process first.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">“The process is much like what happens after a large Thanksgiving meal,” You explains. “All the family members sit at the table and celebrate by eating a lot of food. However, after the meal, some of the family members will go outside and do something active, like playing football, while others will remain at the table or watch the game on television.”</p><div> </div> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-06-09T00:00:00-04:00">Sunday, June 9, 2013</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/nov-dec-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nov - Dec 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Mystery of why cells split may be solved</div></div></section> Sun, 09 Jun 2013 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18498697 at https://alumni.duke.edu App Awareness https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/app-awareness <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><img alt="" class="media-image" height="372" width="237" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/111210_depgaz_12.png?itok=P3IP3BHO" /><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Recent years have seen a proliferation in smartphones, Internet-enabled devices that operate as hybrids of cell phones and computers. Users customize their phones with apps, software programs intended to help accomplish various tasks. The Motorola Droid, which runs the Google Android operating system, was introduced last year and promised users greater flexibility in downloading different kinds of apps from multiple sources.</span></p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">But researchers at Duke have found that some free apps for the Droid are doing more than assisting their users: They also are secretly transmitting users’ data, such as their phone numbers and GPS locations. In response, the researchers created an extension to the Android operating system called TaintDroid that will notify users when certain private information is being shared. TaintDroid was designed in part by Landon Cox ’99, assistant professor of computer science, and doctoral candidate Peter Gilbert.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">Currently, mobile-phone operating systems do offer users some controls to regulate whether an app can access private information, but Cox and Gilbert say these are insufficient. TaintDroid uses a scientific technique called “dynamic taint analysis” to mark information with a bit of computer code called a “taint.” The taint stays with the user’s information and can be used to track where that information goes. This code allows the system to immediately notify users if any unauthorized sharing has occurred.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">TaintDroid is available in prototype form, and the researchers are working to make it widely available soon.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-06-09T00:00:00-04:00">Sunday, June 9, 2013</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/nov-dec-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nov - Dec 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Droid users may be made less vulnerable to unknown data sharing </div></div></section> Sun, 09 Jun 2013 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18498696 at https://alumni.duke.edu Ventilator Blues https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/ventilator-blues <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">Growing numbers of critically ill patients spend prolonged periods of time on ventilators, but little is known about what happens to them after they leave the intensive-care unit. A new study by Duke researchers provides some insight, pointing to the need for changes in the way that doctors and patients’ families approach certain cases of end-of-life care.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">Patients who spent an average of three to four weeks on a ventilator and survived faced severe difficulties in the year after being discharged, the study found. During that time, patients moved between outpatient-care facilities such as nursing homes and rehabilitation centers and the hospital an average of four times. Less than 10 percent were able to regain basic functioning like being able to dress or eat without assistance.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">Researchers also found that it cost an estimated $3.5 million to care for a patient who survived and was able to function on his own a year after being on a ventilator for a prolonged period.</span></p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-06-09T00:00:00-04:00">Sunday, June 9, 2013</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/nov-dec-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nov - Dec 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Patients face serious obstacles after prolonged ventilation</div></div></section> Sun, 09 Jun 2013 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18498695 at https://alumni.duke.edu Hardly Hogwash https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/hardly-hogwash <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 329px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="271" width="329" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/111210_depgaz_13.png?itok=eA3Y8SuH" /><p class="caption-text"><strong style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">Waste not:</strong><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Experimental project will transform hog byproduct into a fuel source. Credit: </span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Karl Bates</p></div></div></div></span></p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">Duke and regional utility company Duke Energy are working together to turn hog waste into power, while at the same time, offsetting carbon consumption.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">In early fall, construction began on a prototype system for capturing methane gas that was planned and is being built with support from the university, the energy company, and state and federal agencies. The $1.08 million system is being built at Loyd Ray Farms, a 9,000-head hog farm in Boonville, North Carolina.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">Under normal circumstances, waste from the hog processing operation goes into a lagoon, where it emits methane gas into the environment. This system captures the gas after the waste goes through a lined and covered anaerobic digester and a lined aeration basin.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">Methane gas contributes twenty-one times as much greenhouse gas as does carbon dioxide. But unlike carbon dioxide, methane is an efficient fuel source. Gas collected from the digester will be used to run a turbine that will generate up to 639 megawatt-hours of energy a year. Methane is burned to power a turbine in the same way burning gasoline pumps pistons in an internal combustion engine.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">Capturing the methane also will create carbon-offset credits for the university and generate renewable energy credits for Duke Energy.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">In exchange for participating in the experimental pilot project, farmer Loyd Bryant, who switched from raising tobacco and beans to hog farming in 1998, will keep the infrastructure at no cost. After ten years, he will own the system free and clear.</p><div> </div> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-06-09T00:00:00-04:00">Sunday, June 9, 2013</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/nov-dec-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nov - Dec 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Pilot project to capture methane gas, address greenhouse effect </div></div></section> Sun, 09 Jun 2013 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18498694 at https://alumni.duke.edu Rice Diet? https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/rice-diet <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <h3 style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="197" width="242" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/111210_depgaz_17.png?itok=Ii04jHMj" /></h3><p style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">Rice is the world’s most popular source of food, but rising temperatures associated with global climate change may diminish the amount of rice available for harvest. An international team that included Duke researcher Jeffrey R. Vincent, Clarence F. Korstian Professor of forest economics and management at the Nicholas School of the Environment, reports that a decline in rice production will mean more people will slip into poverty and hunger.</p><p style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; text-shadow: none !important;">Three billion people eat rice every day, and more than 60 percent of the 1 billion poorest and most undernourished people who live in Asia depend on rice as their staple food.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-06-09T00:00:00-04:00">Sunday, June 9, 2013</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/nov-dec-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nov - Dec 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Climate change will hamper staple crop’s production</div></div></section> Sun, 09 Jun 2013 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18498693 at https://alumni.duke.edu Weight in the Workplace https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/weight-workplace <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Rising obesity rates have precipitated a public-health crisis in recent years, and many researchers have studied how much the epidemic costs workers and businesses. For the most part, the researchers have looked at the extent to which health conditions caused or worsened by obesity have hurt employers, either by increases in medical expenditures or in time absent from work.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="197" width="187" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/111210_depgaz_18.png?itok=k1GwlGpb" /></span></p><table style="font-family: Times; text-shadow: none !important;" width="750" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tbody style="text-shadow: none !important;"><tr style="text-shadow: none !important;"><td style="text-shadow: none !important;" align="center" valign="top" width="*" height="178"><table style="text-shadow: none !important;" width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody style="text-shadow: none !important;"><tr style="text-shadow: none !important;"><td class="bodycontent" style="text-shadow: none !important;" valign="top" width="631"><p style="text-shadow: none !important;"><span class="bodycontent-2010" style="text-shadow: none !important;">But a new study led by Eric Finkelstein, deputy director for health services and systems research at Duke-National University of Singapore, found that lost productivity on the job caused by health problems associated with obesity is a more significant cost than increased medical spending and days missed combined.</span></p><p style="text-shadow: none !important;"><span class="bodycontent-2010" style="text-shadow: none !important;">Lost productivity during the workday was measured and quantified based on an earlier study by another research team that examined a number of criteria. Researchers looked at how much time it took all employees to start working after arriving at the workplace; how often the employees lost their concentration or repeated a job; and whether they worked more slowly than usual, felt fatigued, or did nothing at all.</span></p><p style="text-shadow: none !important;"><span class="bodycontent-2010" style="text-shadow: none !important;">Among employees who were obese, Finkelstein found that lost productivity due to health problems during the workday accounted for as much as 56 percent of the total cost of obesity for women and 68 percent for men. With a burgeoning obese population in the U.S., the study has important implications for employers, as they may face increasing costs to insure fulltime workers.</span></p><p style="text-shadow: none !important;"><span class="bodycontent-2010" style="text-shadow: none !important;">Finkelstein recommends that employers encourage a culture of wellness and provide economic and other incentives to employees who show clear signs of improving their health by losing weight, maintaining a healthy weight, and exercising.</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-06-09T00:00:00-04:00">Sunday, June 9, 2013</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/nov-dec-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nov - Dec 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Loss in on-the-job productivity is most significant cost of obesity</div></div></section> Sun, 09 Jun 2013 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18498692 at https://alumni.duke.edu Land's End https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/lands-end <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Everyone loves a big dramatic story, and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico gave the media the opportunity to tell a whopper: the fiery explosion, the ever-growing estimates of how much oil was spewing into the gulf, and BP’s repeated failed attempts to cap the well. And who could forget the images of oil-slicked pelicans or dirty brown tar balls washing up on white sandy beaches or that endless loop showing oil gushing out of the wellhead at the ocean bottom?</p><p>But a news story requires a resolution, all loose ends tied up neat and tidy, and the oil rig disaster seemed to have obliged on that score as well. Just like that, almost three months after the accident, the well was capped, and the oil, we were told, was gone—all but 30 percent dissolved, dispersed, or consumed by bacteria, according to government officials. The gulf was again open for business, clean enough by August 15 for President Obama and his daughter Sasha to take a much-publicized dip in sapphire-blue waters off the coast of Florida’s panhandle, where the only thing that glistened on the water’s surface was sunlight. End of story; on to the next crisis.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">The problem, of course, is that this representation, satisfying though it may be, is not quite accurate; it certainly is not the whole story. I know, because only twelve days after the President and Sasha took their swim—on the 100th day after the accident—I was in southern Louisiana, leading an eight-person Nicholas School team on a fact-finding tour of three coastal parishes. We went there to learn firsthand how the spill had affected the region’s ecosystems, economy, and communities and to explore potential research and outreach partnerships through which Duke could help local communities.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Despite the media and government reports to the contrary, I saw oil floating on the water and fouling large stretches of the marshes and bayous that make up the Louisiana coastline. But I also saw acres of marshland that were unaffected by the oil gusher, and I saw fish, an alligator, and lots of birds. It appears that, at least for the time being, much of the Louisiana coast has survived the Deepwater Horizon accident. But even though the immediate crisis appears to be behind us, the story is far from over. There have been reports of large quantities of oil on the ocean bottom. The long-term impact of all that oil on the gulf’s ecosystems and fisheries remains to be seen, as does the economic impact of the accident on Louisiana’s fishing industry.</p><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="445" width="300" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/111210_landsend_2.png?itok=sytUz9kg" /><p class="caption-text"><strong>Ripple effect</strong>: A wellhead hit by a barge spews oil into Mud Lake. Credit: Chris Hildreth</p></div></div></div><p class="bodycontent-2010">I went to Louisiana to get the lowdown on the oil-spill story. I left with another story reverberating in my head—a story in which the Deepwater Horizon accident does not take center stage but is only the latest in a cascade of disasters and chronic mismanagement since the 1950s that threaten an ecosystem and the way of life of a people with a unique cultural heritage.</p><div> </div><div>My trip to the gulf was one of two eye-opening journeys I made this summer; the second was to the north Atlantic—to the coasts of Labrador, Baffin Island, and Greenland. Each is an environmental frontline in the balance. Each faces a conflict with an uncertain resolution.</div><div> </div><div>Despite striking differences in the regions’ topographies, geologies, histories, and climates, the people who live in each are wrestling with a common quandry, one at the core of the modern environmental challenge. How can they—and, by extension, we—balance two noble but seemingly incompatible imperatives: to provide the land and resources needed to meet the aspirations of all peoples, while preserving the natural environment that sustains, and the cultural heritages that define us?</div><div> </div><div>My visit to the communities of the bayous and barrier islands of Louisiana was bittersweet. The people who live and work there are proud and resourceful, warm and welcoming. But the wetlands and waters that are the foundation of their way of life, a culture unlike any other in the nation, are disappearing or being degraded—and this had been going on long before the Deepwater Horizon spill. The people of the bayous can do little about it. Their landscape is being changed by forces that operate outside their control—policies for flood control and navigation on the Mississippi River, the extraction of oil and gas along the coast, devastating hurricanes, and the slow but relentless sea-level rise associated with climate change.</div><div> </div><div>The wetlands of the Gulf Coast encompass one of our nation’s most valuable ecosystems and constitute about 30 percent of America’s total wetlands. They provide a natural defense against hurricanes and habitat for a multitude of creatures critical to the region’s ecology and economy. Roughly 40 percent of the fish caught by commercial fishermen in the U.S. come from the Gulf Coast. The wetlands also support billions of dollars of infrastructure needed for transporting and refining the oil and gas extracted from the gulf. And the ports of New Orleans and south Louisiana handle more tonnage than any other port system in the world.</div><div> </div><div>Unfortunately the wetlands of the Gulf Coast are disappearing at an alarming rate. While I was looking for oil, an offhand remark by Ricky Galjour, a knowledgeable and friendly fisherman and member of the Plaquemines Parish Inland Waterway Strike Force team who drove our boats, opened my eyes to the real environmental disaster of the gulf. We were cruising across Bay Jimmy, intently inspecting a crescent of heavily oiled marshes, when Galjour directed my attention in the opposite direction. “You see that water over there?” he said, pointing toward the middle of the bay. “That used to be land. Now it’s all gone.” Later he showed members of our team a five-year-old map. It showed an island, ironically named Big Island, in the very spot he had pointed out. Cat Island was gone, too. So were dozens of others.</div><div> </div><div>I heard similar accounts of disappearing land, frequent flooding, lost jobs, and a vanishing way of life from parish officials, fishermen, community volunteers, environmental managers, marina owners, store clerks, and just plain citizens in each of the parishes our team toured.</div><div> </div><div><div>My Duke colleague Curtis Richardson, one of the world’s experts on wetlands, who accompanied us on the trip, explained that the Gulf Coast is being hit with a quadruple whammy by human activities: The construction of dams, levees, and other diversions on the Mississippi River, built to improve navigation and flood control along the river, are starving the bayous and marshes of the replenishing silt they need to counteract natural erosion and of critically needed infusions of freshwater. In addition, oil and gas extraction are causing the wetlands to subside, making them more susceptible to erosion. Finally, climate change and related sea-level rise are causing more erosion. The result is a marshland with grass dying of saltwater poisoning. Once the grass dies, the underlying soil washes away, and what had been the site of vibrant human communities, fisheries, and wildlife becomes open water. Islands slip beneath the waves, as do fields where cows grazed and orange trees grew.</div></div><div><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 317px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="480" width="317" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/111210_landsend_3.png?itok=n2zEGQ8o" /><p class="caption-text"><strong>Ripple effect</strong>: Oily booms in the dying marsh grasses of Bay Jimmy. Credit: Chris Hildreth</p></div></div></div></div><div>By some estimates, we lose about one football field’s worth of wetlands from the Gulf Coast every forty-five minutes or so. Think of it: In the time it took Duke to play three quarters of its last football game, the Gulf Coast lost the equivalent of the field Duke was playing on. Now extrapolate that to the decades this has been going on and, unless we decide to do something about it, to the decades of the future.</div><div> </div><div>State and federal governments have known about the plight of the Louisiana coast longer than most of us have been alive but have done precious little to turn the tide. In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, President Obama has pledged to restore the state’s wetlands. But we heard a similar pledge from President Bush following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And a President can’t do it on his own; Congress still has to appropriate the money. And the Army Corps of Engineers has to change its management of the mighty Mississippi. And local officials, business owners, and homeowners in riverfront communities upriver have to sacrifice a little ease of navigation and a measure of flood protection to allow it to happen. It’s Swamp Politics 101, and the people and animals that call the bayou region home are caught in the crossfire.</div><div> </div><div>The morning after ABC News and other national media outlets elatedly reported claims by BP and some federal officials that cleanup crews could no longer find much oil to mop up, I dipped a latex-gloved hand into a viscous, rust-orange streak of crude as wide as a county two-lane, in the remote backwaters of Bayou Wilkinson. On the same day, I saw large stretches of oiled marshes in Bay Jimmy.</div><div> </div><div>There also were some surreal, Alice-in-Wonderland moments, so appalling we had to laugh—like watching a crew of three in a fishing boat using a jerry-rigged ShopVac to suck up oil along a huge expanse of oil-soaked marsh in Bay Jimmy. They were part of BP’s cleanup crew. After hours of work, they had vacuumed up one barrel of brown muck where even 100 barrels would have made little difference.</div><div> </div><div>And then there was the time, heading back to our home base on a helicopter, when we happened upon a broken wellhead in the gulf that was spewing oil 100 feet into the air and over the nearby marsh while a Coast Guard boat sat helplessly by. Apparently a barge had run over the wellhead the night before. It reportedly took five days for the wellhead to be capped.</div><div> </div><div>It wasn’t all gloom and doom, however. We found reason for hope: lots of folks dedicated to fighting against the tide, literally and figuratively.</div><div> </div><div>We met Cindy Brown M.E.M. ’93, who heads The Nature Conservancy’s Gulf of Mexico Project. She’s leading efforts to restore erosion-slowing oyster reefs in offshore waters near the Jefferson Parish community of Grand Isle. We learned about some promising small-scale wetlands restoration projects from Jim Pahl, a former postdoctoral research associate at the Duke University Wetland Center, who heads applied research and management at the Louisiana Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration. And we met with Plaquemines Parish’s ambitious, seemingly indefatigable president, Billy Nungesser, who spearheaded the parish’s oil-spill cleanup efforts and has almost singlehandedly kept the plight of the region on the media’s radar screen for much of the year.</div><div> </div><div>Most moving was our visit to the town of Dulac in Lower Terrebonne Parish, where we met Rebecca Templeton of Bayou Grace, a nonprofit grassroots organization, and Jamie Biliot, director of the Dulac Community Center. Together they are working to provide education, job retraining, and other essential social services to residents of five rural, largely minority bayou communities where many are out of work and the median annual income of those who do have jobs is less than $9,000. Because of wetlands loss, their homes are flooded out each time there’s a major storm. Life in bayou communities that have existed for more than 100 years is becoming untenable.</div><div> </div><div>By the end of my third day in Louisiana, I was overloaded and exhausted. But I had a profoundly deeper understanding of the ongoing environmental challenges the Gulf Coast faces—not just the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but also the chronic, slow-moving challenges that rarely grab the media spotlight or galvanize the public the way a massive oil spill can.</div><div> </div><div><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 670px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="300" width="670" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/111210_landsend_4.png" /><p class="caption-text"><strong>Downsizing</strong>: expedition members, including Chameides, center, in yellow jacket, near Sermeq Kujalleq glacier, which has retreated approximately fifteen kilometers over the past decade. Credit: Jonathan R. Green</p></div></div></div></div><div><div>The day after I returned from the gulf, I repacked my bags and headed out for a two-week trip in the opposite direction—into the Arctic. As an environmental scientist, I knew to a certain extent what I’d find. Few places on Earth face such complex ecological challenges, and few have been studied or written about as extensively in recent years. The effects of global warming have been far larger here than elsewhere, and the warming is profoundly changing the landscape and the lives of the people who live here.</div><div> </div><div>Nonetheless, I was taken aback and deeply moved by what I saw, especially along the Canadian coasts of Labrador and Baffin Island, where people cling to a hardscrabble life on a rocky landscape in an effort to keep their heritage alive.</div><div> </div><div>The boulder-strewn terrain covered by a spongy mat of peat and tundra is breathtaking and eerily beautiful, and, to this visitor from North Carolina, completely inhospitable. The wind, even on a mid-summer day, is unrelenting; fog banks shroud the small coastal villages in a dense, damp, bone-chilling cloak of white; and there’s always the possibility of a fatal run-in with a bear.</div><div> </div><div>It’s hard to believe anyone would choose to live in such a place. Yet some have: first (to the best of our limited knowledge) the Dorset Eskimos, then the Vikings, the Inuit, and, finally, the Basques and other Europeans, who arrived in Labrador in the 1500s, initially setting up seasonal camps to hunt whales and, later, cod—fishing both, eventually, to the point of collapse. The first permanent settlement by Europeans—mere toeholds in the rocky cliffs—didn’t spring up until the late 1700s.</div><div> </div><div>The twentieth century has not been kind to the coastal villages of Labrador and Baffin Island. Many of the once-thriving fishing villages of the region are little more than ghost towns. The collapse of the whale and cod fisheries dealt a severe economic blow to the region and forced many to give up and leave.</div></div><div> </div><div><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 670px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="300" width="670" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/111210_landsend_5.png" /><p class="caption-text"><strong>Lost</strong> <strong>and gone forever</strong>: Town of Illulisat—Greenlandic for “icebergs”—no longer lives up to the name, left; Global warming has devastated the economy of Baffin Island, top right; polar bears stranded on Monumental Island off Baffin Island face starvation unless they brave the open ocean, bottom right. Credit: Alison Wright/CORBIS (left), Jonathan R. Green (top and bottom right)</p></div></div></div></div><div><div>Global warming also is taking its toll. The thinning of coastal ice is making wintertime transport of goods and people from town to town unsafe; for island villages like the one I visited on Battle Harbor, the loss of coastal ice has made it impossible for people to winter over because they can no longer get supplies from the mainland.</div><div> </div><div>I found another poignant sign of global warming in Auyuittuq, a national park near the town of Pangnirtung, on Baffin Island, the fifth-largest island in the world. In Inuktitut the word “auyuittuq” means “the land that never melts.” Ironically, it’s a name that no longer quite fits, because the park is now a land that not only is melting, but melting faster and faster.</div><div> </div><div>And then there’s the polar bear, arguably the poster child for the dire impact of climate change. However, in the villages I visited, the polar bear is a lot more than a symbol—it is an animal these people have hunted for millennia. Even today, despite concerns that melting Arctic ice could lead to the bear’s extinction, the Inuit are allowed to hunt a limited number every year in deference to their cultural heritage. The exception has engendered an international squabble: In the face of protests from foreign governments and nonprofits, the Inuit claim the right to hunt their traditional prey, and the Canadian government, siding with them, maintains its right to manage its own polar-bear populations. There are no easy answers to this conflict.</div><div> </div><div>But while the Canadian government is siding with the Inuit today, perhaps the most devastating setback to these people came at the hands of that government. Ironically, it was done in the name of helping them. In the 1950s and ’60s, the government instituted resettlement programs, moving citizens from many of the remote Inuit villages to other, more accessible locales. The rationale was to be able to provide better services and help them assimilate into the Canadian mainstream. The upshot was the near destruction of Inuit culture. (I learned that a similar thing happened to the native people of Greenland at the hands of the Danish government during the same period.)</div><div> </div><div>Eventually, in the 1990s, Ottawa recognized the serious problems the relocations had caused: the undue hardship they placed on the relocated and the chipping away of an important part of Canada’s cultural heritage. The government is now trying to make amends. It is providing funds to make it possible for the Inuit to move back to their native homes, at least during the summer, and in Hebron, it has erected a monument apologizing to the Inuit for the relocation program.</div></div><div> </div><div><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 256px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="309" width="256" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/111210_landsend_6.png?itok=sFvDdhVs" /><p class="caption-text"><strong>Showman</strong>: Guide Robert Joalie leads hike over the spongy tundra of Auyuittuq. Credit: William Chameides</p></div></div></div></div><div><div>Despite these hardships, the Inuit are a remarkably friendly and optimistic people. Two of the many I met were especially memorable. One was Robert Joalie, my guide on a hike over the spongy tundra of Auyuittuq. Joalie was a font of information about the local flora and fauna and had at his ready recall all the latest data on the warming trends on Baffin Island. But what made Joalie especially memorable was his irrepressible showmanship. As I later found out, there’s no mystery there—he had costarred with Jason Scott Lee in Map of the Human Heart, a 1993 movie about a cartographer who falls in love while on assignment to map uncharted regions of the Arctic.</div><div> </div><div>Also memorable was Lisa Poole, who hosted a visit to the small Labradorean island of Battle Harbor. A Métis proud of her Inuit-Basque ancestry, Poole estimates that about 90 percent of the people on the island are of similar descent. She claims she can trace her parentage back to the 1700s. Her family lived in Battle Harbor until they were resettled in the 1960s. She now lives with her husband and children in nearby St. Louis, a village of about 400 on the South Saskatchewan River, traveling by ferry to Battle Harbor daily during the summer to serve as a tour guide.</div><div> </div><div>Speaking with Poole, I was surprised to realize that I had come full circle from my visit to the Louisiana bayous and my conversation with Rebecca Templeton a couple of weeks earlier. The parallels were striking. For one, there is a common non-Anglo cultural connection. The heritage of Lisa Poole is strongly influenced by the Basque. Similarly, much of the Cajun heritage that Rebecca Templeton honors was first brought to the Gulf Coast in the 1700s by French-speaking Acadians who were forced to leave Canada when the region came under British rule.</div><div> </div><div>There is also the environmental connection. In the bayou, the over-exploitation of the Mississippi River Delta and the extraction of oil and gas in the gulf are undermining the marshes upon which Cajun life is built and based. In places like Battle Harbor, overfishing and the subsequent collapse of first the whaling and then the cod fisheries have destroyed the villages’ economic viability. And climate change threatens to alter profoundly the Arctic ecosystems that sustain the lives and culture of the Inuit.</div><div> </div><div>Finally, there is the commonality of purpose. Poole, Templeton, Joalie, and Biliot feel the tug of their heritage. It keeps them living in the place of their forebears and has led them to dedicating their lives to preserving that heritage. One could perhaps argue that in their lives we can see in microcosm the challenge of all humanity: meeting human needs without destroying the environment or sacrificing our cultural heritage. It’s a story of epic proportions. Depending upon what happens, including what we humans do, it could turn out to be a good, old-fashioned dramatic story with a happy ending or an environmental and human tragedy.</div><div> </div><div><em>Chameides is dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Nicholas Professor of the environment.</em></div><div> </div></div><div> </div> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-11-30T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, November 30, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/111210_landsend_1.png" width="670" height="300" alt="Thick slick: Clockwise from top lift, oil on surface of water, St. Mary&#039;s Point; Chameides dips glove in oil-soaked waters off St.Mary’s Point, in Bayou Wilkinson, north Barataria Bay, one of the areas hardest hit by the gulf oil spill; shrimp boats off Grand Isle outfitted with booms instead of nets. Credit: Chris Hildreth" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/william-l-chameides" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William L. Chameides</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/nov-dec-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nov - Dec 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The dean of the Nicholas School views environmental degradation in two seemingly opposite parts of the globe and discovers some suprising similarities.</div></div></section> Tue, 30 Nov 2010 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500636 at https://alumni.duke.edu I Sing The Body Genomic https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/i-sing-body-genomic <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p class="bodycontent-2010">Even in the Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr era, most people don’t put highly personal details like this—especially biological ones, such as medical records and genetic data—out for the world to see. But for Church, the personal is professional. All this openness is part of an experiment he’s running called the Personal Genome Project (PGP), in which volunteers are having their DNA sequenced and making the resulting genotypes, along with relevant details about their lifestyles and medical histories (a.k.a., phenotypes), known to anyone who’s curious.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">The point is to provide a preview of a future when many people know what’s in their own genes—a future that will be possible largely because technology invented by Church and others has made genome sequencing much cheaper than it used to be. (In addition to his day job as a Harvard genetics professor, Church advises or has founded more than twenty biotech firms.) The first sequenced human genome cost $3 billion. Today, a sequence can be had for about $10,000, and in the near future, it will cost less than $1,000. This new future will be an astonishingly productive time for medical research, as scientists begin to sift through and compare cheaply obtained genomes to elucidate why some people get sick and others stay healthy. But it will also be a time of shifting ethical and legal norms about biology and identity, and there may be new risks: of genetic information escaping from supposedly secure databases and winding up on the Web, of insurance companies trying to use it against patients, of private data becoming suddenly, irrevocably public.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="313" width="300" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/111210_church_2.jpg?itok=3w5kWZ6H" />So Church is trying to figure out what this new society might look like by simulating it in miniature with his band of volunteers<br /> and, in the grand tradition of self-experimentation, himself. All that personal information of his is on the Web because he’s PGP Subject No. 1. “George is the rare practicing scientist who looks outward,” says Misha Angrist, an assistant professor at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, who is PGP Subject No. 4 (yes, his genome and medical data are on the Internet, too). “There aren’t a lot of people developing the technology who are also thinking so far downstream about what will be done with it.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">But let’s go upstream for a moment, back to Church’s time at Duke—because in a sense, that’s where all this started. Church was not an ordinary student. A computer prodigy as a child, he finished his undergraduate degree magna cum laude in two years and went straight into graduate studies. He found himself so fascinated by emerging tools for studying and visualizing molecules that soon he was spending about 100 hours a week in the lab and not nearly enough hours in class. Some of his mentors “tried to argue that I was somehow special,” he says, but administrators drew a hard line: “They said, ‘Yeah, everybody’s special.’ I didn’t particularly hold it against anybody, but I guess I felt like, ‘Well, I’m doing science anyway; what difference does it make if I don’t always go to class?’ That was my immaturity showing.” And so came the letter (“suitable for framing,” Church notes on his website) informing him that he had failed a course and would have to leave campus: “We … hope that whatever problems or circumstances may have contributed to your lack of success inpursuing your chosen field at Duke will not keep you from successful pursuit of a productive career.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">There was no need to worry. Church had already sown the seeds of his productive career during those 100-hour weeks at the bench, developing software for visualizing the structures of tiny molecules of RNA, the complement to DNA that, among other tasks, helps it make protein. (The software is still in use today.) He knew exactly where he wanted to go next: the lab of Walter Gilbert, a Harvard biochemist who would soon win the Nobel Prize. With Gilbert, Church developed a machine that could sequence large amounts of DNA—that is, discern the order of the four chemical “letters” or nucleotides (A, T, G, and C for adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine) that make it up.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">DNA is an instruction manual for the body’s most fundamental processes. Variants, or tweaks in the order of the DNA letters—a change of an A for a G, say, or the loss of a stretch of letters on a given<br /> chromosome—are a little like typos in that manual. Sometimes they don’t make any difference; the body can still “read” what it’s supposed to do. Other times, the typos result in the manufacture of proteins that don’t perform their biological jobs correctly. Variants can also cause the body to ramp up or dial back the production of many thousands of chemicals crucial to its function. This is how genes cause disease, influence behavior, and, to some degree, make us who we are as individuals. By comparing people’s genetic readouts—especially by lining up lists of hundreds of thousands of genes in many people, side by side, and looking for variants that appear in some people but not in others—scientists can start to figure out why, at the biochemical level, those people differ from each other.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">When Church was first developing his technology, this sort of comparison wasn’t feasible. Scientists could read DNA, but<br /> only small stretches of letters—sentences and paragraphs, not chapters, and certainly not entire manuals. It was slow, painstaking work that had to be done by hand. Church and Gilbert’s automating technology (and a similar method called<br /> Sanger sequencing that would eventually overtake it) made it possible to imagine reading DNA on a large scale—to dream not of sentences but of books.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">By now it was 1984, and a lot of other people were thinking about the possibilities in the human genome. Among them<br /> were researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy, who that year summoned a small group of scientists—including Church, by far one of the youngest—to Alta, Utah, to discuss the prospect of estimating the rate at which genetic mutations accumulate in the average person under normal circumstances. (They were concerned that the rate would be higher in Japanese civilians who had survived atom-bomb attacks.) Making such an estimate is “barely possible” even today, says Church, because to reach statistical significance requires huge sets of genetic data from thousands and thousands of people, amounts of data that are just now starting to become widely available. It was an unthinkable goal in 1984.</p><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 670px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="213" width="670" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/111210_church_burke.jpg" /><p class="caption-text"><strong style="text-shadow: none !important;">What's inside: </strong><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Nucleus of each human cell contains forty-six chromosomes (top left); each chromosome consists of a long coil of DNA, which is made of up of base pairs of the four nucleotides: A (adenine) binds with T (thymine), and C (cytosine) binds with G (guanine). If even one base pair is not in the correct sequence in a gene, it can lead to disease. Credit: </span><span class="photocredit" style="text-shadow: none !important;">Christopher Burke</span></p></div></div></div><div class="media-h-caption" style="text-shadow: none !important;"><span class="photocredit" style="text-shadow: none !important;"></span>“All of us concluded immediately that there was no way we could estimate mutation rates, so we were basically done with a three-day meeting in the first ten minutes. We said, ‘Hmmm, what else can we do except ski?’ ” says Church. “And then we all kind of simultaneously said, ‘Hey, we could sequence the genome.’ It was like the stupidest meeting I’d ever been to suddenly turned into a smart one.”</div><div class="media-h-caption" style="text-shadow: none !important;"><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">The Human Genome Project did not actually involve sequencing one individual’s entire set of chromosomes. Instead, the idea was to make a list of nucleotides that would represent an “average” person, then use it as a sample definition of what the human species looks like biochemically. Scientists could then go on to compare this “reference genome” to those of other, real individuals.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">At the time, this was a radical idea. Nothing on its scale had ever been done before in biology. Scientists estimated that it would cost billions, and many worried that it would crowd out other worthy research that also needed funding. But over the next few years, at a series of fractious summits—all of which Church attended—the Human Genome Project crystallized, going from unlikely to inevitable. By 1987, the major mission of biology at the turn of the millennium had been set.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">Since then, genomic sequencing has gone from exotic to everyday. The draft of the human genome was released in the early 2000s. (Church helped set up several of the centers that did the work.) Many other organisms, from the cacao plant to boxer dogs to the Tasmanian devil, have been sequenced as well.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">Meanwhile, in his own lab, Church has been reinventing the very idea of sequencing. Instead of using the automated techniques he developed in the 1980s, he now conducts research using a much cheaper machine he developed called the Polonator. First, scientists pour a solution of DNA fragments onto a microscope slide. Then they add a polymerase, an enzyme necessary for the replication of DNA. The enzyme causes each fragment to rebuild itself over and over until the slide is covered with millions of miniscule dots called “polonies” (polymerase colonies) teeming with genetic material. These then are “read” by the Polonator, which causes them to light up in different colors depending on which nucleotides—A, C, T, or G—are present</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">The Polonator is what Church is using to sequence his PGP volunteers. So far, only ten people have undergone analysis and then gone public with the results. All of them are highly educated with some form of expertise in genetics; they include Duke’s Angrist, the technology investor Esther Dyson, and the psychologist/writer Steven Pinker. The roster has a high collective<br />intelligence quotient by design. Church felt comfortable asking people to reveal their genetic information to the world only if he was sure they understood what they might be getting into. So far, though, all the subjects still have health insurance (a law passed in 2008 forbids health insurers from discriminating on the basis of genetic data). And they seem pretty comfortable with their relative lack of privacy: At a recent conference in Cambridge, they all sat side-by-side on stage, happily taking questions about their experiences so far.</p><div><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="313" width="300" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/111210_church_dna2.jpg?itok=arWB_HrM" /><p class="caption-text">Credit: Christopher Burke</p></div></div></div></div><div><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">But the Personal Genome Project isn’t stopping with the first ten participants. There’s a broader part of the project that requires a separate group of volunteers to (1) have the protein-making portions of their DNA analyzed, (2) offer up a huge amount of personal information about their health and lifestyles, and (3) sign over permission for Church’s group and other scientists to use all the data for a wide variety of research projects. So far, 15,000 people have signed up. This is stunning, given that the project’s recruiting has been done almost entirely through news articles and word-of-mouth; Church hasn’t been plastering subway cars and telephone poles with fliers. And unlike volunteers in some clinical trials, the 15,000 won’t receive any financial reward. Their only compensation is the information gleaned from their own DNA. This aspect of the PGP alone is unusual. Most genetic research projects don’t give subjects any access to the data that result from the work.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">That 15,000 people have expressed interest is even more astonishing considering what the National Institutes of Health thought of the project when Church first proposed it. The agency declined to fund the work, Church says, partly because of “a concern that no one would show up.” (The project is paid for by private donations from individuals and companies such as Google.) Like the Human Genome Project, the Personal Genome Project at its beginning seemed outlandish in both its scope and its open-ended purpose. “George just flummoxed the NIH,” says Angrist. “ ‘Let’s sequence a lot of healthy people and see what happens.’ This was perceived as a totally wacky, beyond-the-pale idea. What bearing did it have on improving health outcomes, curing disease, reducing health disparities?”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">The idea of sequencing many healthy people has since caught on; in fact, it’s now the basis for some of the biggest ongoing projects in biology. But Church still has some critics who question the fact that his volunteers have to sign an unusual document, a form based on a principle called “open consent” rather than the “informed consent” typically used in medical research. PGP participants acknowledge that their genetic and health data may be used for purposes that are unforeseeable at present. They are also told that once the project is under way, they’ll be asked to publish their data on the PGP website. Better that than give them a false reassurance of privacy, Church says. “The more people you share data with, the more likely the data will escape. And once it escapes, there are many different mechanisms by which it can be identified.” But some scientists are concerned that this principle of “open consent” could harm the medical and genetic enterprise by scaring people away from trials.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">Still, Church has many supporters, among them a young Duke graduate named Daniel Vorhaus ’03, who first read about him in <span class="pubtitle">Scientific American</span> back in 2006. “I sent him an e-mail that said, ‘Hey, I’m in law school, I have a background in bioethics, I think this is interesting, is there something I can to do help?’ ” says Vorhaus. “And—classic George—he said, ‘That’s great. Can you write a white paper to NIH defending the project?’ I probably did not have the qualifications to do that at the time. But I was interested, I was motivated, and I was free.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">Vorhaus is now the PGP’s legal adviser, a job he does in his spare time. Since he joined the project, he says, he’s been happy to see how some of Church’s ideas have gone from out-there to almost mainstream. “The notion that people should have access to their own raw genetic information— that used to be an extremely frowned-upon and controversial notion, but it’s been surprising how much acceptance it’s gained in the last couple of years,” says Vorhaus. “Now, people see that as a right. We squabble over what kind of interpretation you can do and what kind of regulation there should be, but the fundamental framework of the conversation has shifted.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">Now that the cultural shift he envisioned and enabled is under way, Church is taking on other projects that are big enough to change society and unusual enough to ruffle a few feathers. There’s his vision for synthetic biology, including the hypothetical construction of “mirror life”—organisms that have the reverse DNA sequences to those found in nature. There’s MAGE, a device that essentially speeds up evolution, inducing billions of mutations in bacterial populations over the course of just a few days, including some mutations that could help scientists engineer bacteria that produce artificial fuels or foods.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">And there’s Knome, his personal genomics company, which is offering sequencing services to researchers and<br />private individuals. It recently picked up a celebrity client, Ozzy Osbourne. Knome’s researchers probably won’t be able to figure out exactly why, despite exposing himself to who knows how many unhealthy substances over the years, Osbourne is still alive. But something interesting is bound to turn up in his DNA nonetheless. Does that project sound a little out-there? Well, yes. It’s classic George.<br /><br /><span class="byline">Carmichael ’01, a member of </span>Duke Magazine’<span class="byline">s Editorial Advisory Board, is a senior writer at </span>Newsweek<span class="byline"> and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.</span></p></div><div><span class="byline"><br /></span></div></div> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-11-30T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, November 30, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/111210_church_1.jpg" width="670" height="300" alt="Getting personal: Church, left, believes widespread sharing of genetic information will expedite scientific and medical advancements. Credit: Fred Field" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/mary-carmichael" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mary Carmichael</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/nov-dec-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nov - Dec 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Geneticist George Church is a leader in the study of the human genome. Exhibit A: George Church.</div></div></section> Tue, 30 Nov 2010 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500634 at https://alumni.duke.edu Sex, Love and Celibacy https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/sex-love-and-celibacy <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p class="bodycontent-2010">Today’s college students have no interest in dating, seek physical intimacy through random sexual encounters, and consider drunken promiscuity the social norm on campus. That’s been the dominant narrative reported by the mainstream media, by college task forces on student life, and, in many cases, by students themselves. Duke undergraduates in particular have received inordinate scrutiny for their sex lives.<span class="pubtitle"> I Am Charlotte Simmons</span>, a novel by Duke parent Tom Wolfe, depicts a campus setting believed by most observers and critics to be based on Duke (though he’s claimed otherwise). In the book, an innocent young woman is debauched by the toxic dynamics of a predominant social (and sexual) order ruled by Greeks, athletes, and spoiled, spiteful rich girls.</p><div id="container-addins"><div id="addins" class="sidebar">In 2006, at the height of the lacrosse debacle, a salacious Rolling Stone article, “Sex and Scandal at Duke,” described the university as a place where “traditional intercourse is common, and oral sex nearly ubiquitous, regarded as sort of a form of elaborate kissing that doesn’t really mean very much.” And in October, a young alumna’s raunchy rankings of her (mostly) drunken sexual conquests became national news..</div></div><p class="bodycontent-2010">Duke social scientists S. Philip Morgan and Suzanne Shanahan had heard the rhetoric and reports of damage wrought by the so-called hookup culture, where hooking up is generally understood to be a physical encounter that may or may not include sexual<br /> intercourse. Neither Shanahan’s nor Morgan’s research focuses on the social relationships of college students. Morgan, the Norb F. Schaefer Professor of international studies and professor of sociology, is an authority on how structural and cultural factors contribute to variations in global fertility rates across populations. Shanahan is associate director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics and an associate research professor of sociology; her research interests include corporate social responsibility, the effects of immigration on racial violence, and ethical crises in business, higher education, organized religion, and the military.</p><div class="media-header fll " style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 346px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="317" width="346" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/111210_relationships_chart.jpg?itok=h7PltjFE" /><p class="caption-text">Data for freshmen and seniors show roughly one-third of students are in exclusive relationships, another third participated in a hookup—defined as some sort of sexual activity outside of a romantic relationship—and final third participated in neither; seniors are more likely to be in a relationship than freshmen.<span style="font-size: 10px;"> </span></p></div></div></div></div><p class="bodycontent-2010">Still, as social scientists interested in behavioral currents within specific groups of people, they couldn’t help noticing that none of the dire reports about today’s dissolute youth provided substantive, quantitative data to support their claims.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">“When we looked at how academic surveys of the hookup culture were conducted, we found that they were being done in a way that was nonrepresentative of the overall student population,” says Morgan. “Often it would be student volunteers handing out surveys to classes on sex and sexuality. Or the surveys would ask, Have you ever hooked up? without defining what that means.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Furthermore, the few surveys that had been done only asked about students’ behavior once they arrived at college. Shanahan says she and Morgan suspected that there were patterns of behavior that began in high school (or earlier). “We were curiousabout a trajectory of behavior over time,” she says. “Were people coming to campus with a set of behaviors and continuing them, or, as some people believe, were students showing up innocent and becoming ‘corrupted’ by what they encountered?</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">So Morgan and Shanahan designed an online survey that they distributed in November of 2007. Geared to two cohorts—freshmen and seniors—the 162-question survey asked a wide range of questions, including general demographic information, frequency and amount of alcohol intake, Greek and athletic affiliation, academic major, and impressions of peer-group behavior.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">There were specific, explicit questions about sexual encounters both for those indicating that they had hooked up and for those who said they were in an exclusive romantic relationship. The survey also asked about post-hookup feelings, sexual satisfaction, and feelings of self worth. Finally, the survey polled students about their plan for relationships after graduation, including whether and when they planned to marry and have children and whether they planned to remain faithful to their future spouse.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">More than 75 percent of students responded, a significantly high rate indicating results that are statistically representative of the general student population, according to Morgan and Shanahan. To encourage participation, the survey was distributed via email, so students could respond from the privacy of their dorm rooms, and respondents received a nominal payment deposited directly into their flex accounts. But Morgan observes that people in general are more likely to respond to questionnaires that pertain to something that interests them. (By comparison, a survey by the Center for Instructional Technology on students’ use of the Blackboard teaching tool garnered a 26 percent response rate.)</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">What emerges, the researchers say, is a portrait of a diverse student body, an image that runs counter to the prevailing accounts of college life. Approximately one-third of all respondents reported that they were in exclusive, romantic relationships. Another third said they had participated in a hookup—which the researchers defined as “sexual activity with someone outside of an exclusive romantic relationship.” But less than one-third of that group had engaged in sexual intercourse (the remaining hookups didn’t go beyond kissing and fondling, or, to use a previous generation’s term, making out). The final third of respondents reported that they neither hooked up nor were in a committed relationship.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Other key findings include:</p><ul><li>Nearly 60 percent of freshmen reported that they were still virgins.</li><li>Race and ethnicity play an important role. Asian students were the least likely to be in a relationship or to have hooked up; Asians, blacks, and those who participate regularly in religious activities were significantly less likely to hook up than white or Latino students.</li><li>Members of Greek organizations were much more likely to hook up than non- Greeks. (This reflects the senior-class</li><li>respondents only, as the survey was conducted before rush, and freshmen weren’t yet in a fraternity or sorority.) Contributing to this statistic is the correlation between alcohol and hookups, and the fact that alcohol consumption among members of Greek organizations is higher than in the overall student population.</li><li>Students had bought into the idea that hooking up was the behavioral standard. Most students estimated that at least half of Duke students were active in the hookup scene.</li><li>Both men and women in committed relationships reported the highest level of sexual satisfaction and self-esteem, followed closely by those hooking up. (This contradicts assertions that hookups per se are demeaning to women.)</li><li>Nearly all respondents plan to marry and have children; they said they do not plan to hook up after marriage—even when there is no chance of getting caught.</li></ul><p class="bodycontent-2010">Shanahan admits she was pleasantly confounded by the results. “I had sort of bought into the notion that there was something about the campus culture that was damaging to young people who came into it,” she says. “At the same time, part of my frustration with what I was hearing and reading was that the conclusions were based on selective stories. Well, if you’re looking at a predefined problem—and you define hooking up as a problem, which is how many journalistic accounts approach it—then you are going to go out and find people who illustrate the worst of that problem. So we saw all this hysteria about hooking up, but when you look at the data, you get a much more subtle and informed picture of what people are actually doing.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Morgan, an empiricist by nature, was less surprised. “If there’s one lesson I’ve learned in my career, when you look at the data, things haven’t changed as much as people think they have. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a lot of acceptability around sexual experimentation. People had one-night stands. A significant number of Baby Boomers were pregnant when they got married, so premarital sex is not new. There’s historical and cultural continuity to these contemporary behaviors.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">The survey generated a wealth of data, from the influence of religion in students’ lives (nearly 40 percent of students say it is very important to them) to criteria used for selecting a romantic or hookup partner. Some conclusions confirm results of other, less data-driven studies—students who drink hook up more often than those who do not, and students gravitate to friends and peer groups that share their standards of social behavior.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">While there is some overlap among the three categories of relationships, Shanahan’s hunch that past behavior can predict future behavior proved correct. Freshmen who had hooked up in high school were more likely to hook up once they got to Duke, for example. And students who had friends in exclusive, long-term relationships were more likely to be in an exclusive relationship themselves.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Senior Lindsey Wallace started dating her boyfriend, Tony Tomasello, when both were high-school juniors in Greenville, South Carolina. When it became clear that the two would attend different colleges—he enrolled in the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg—they decided to stay together, despite the difficulty of distance. “We knew it would be hard,” she says, “but we decided to make it work.”</p><p>Wallace says her first semester at Duke was by far the most difficult socially. At the time she didn’t drink, and she was turned off by the alcohol-fueled fraternity scene that lured many of her classmates. “Everyone goes crazy freshman year,” she says. “There’s an intoxication of freedom because kids are away from home for the first time without their parents. I think that happens at every college.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">A Benjamin N. Duke Scholar and Truman Scholarship recipient who is pursuing a double major in political science and psychology, Wallace sought out like-minded peers as she acclimated to college life. “Most of my friends are in committed relationships,” she says. “Some are still with people they were dating in high school, and some are in relationships with people they met here. I would estimate that 70 percent of my friends are in committed relationships.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">She says that she and her friends, most of whom are applying to graduate school, put high priority on academics and volunteering or service work. In addition to her course work, Wallace became president of a student organization dedicated to animal welfare and volunteers with an organization that helps recovering addicts with job and personal skills. On weekends, when she and her friends have free time to socialize, she says, they go out dancing as a group or attend Duke University Union events.</p><div><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 480px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="437" width="480" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/111210_booklarge.jpg?itok=ObrnKeVX" /><p class="caption-text">Glossary of terms.</p></div></div></div></div><div><p class="bodycontent-2010">As the fall semester got under way, Wallace was completing her application for the Rhodes Scholarship; if selected, she and Tomasello have agreed he will accompany her to Oxford while she pursues a joint degree in public policy studies and law.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">While Wallace and Tomasello have been able to maintain a long-term, long-distance romance, the elongated education and career process for today’s twenty-somethings makes it more difficult for many in their generation to do both. Like Wallace, sophomore Michael Kahn dated off and on in high school, but he and his girlfriend decided not to stay togetherwhen they were admitted to different colleges.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">As generations before him have done, Kahn engaged in fairly typical first-year student activities—going to parties, testing his own limits, making dozens of new friends in a short period of time, and observing the rituals of his peer group, including treks to parties and off-campus night clubs such as Shooters II, a notorious Durham hotspot. Like spring-break trips to Myrtle Beach, Shooters II is one of those seedy destinations that seem both to repel and attract students in equal measure.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">“Alcohol plays a big part in inhibiting your ability to make a good decision,” says Kahn. “There’s no way around that. So I think a lot of hookups that happen early in the year, especially for freshmen, are due to alcohol.” But Kahn says he realized fairly early on in his freshman year that the party scene wasn’t for him—and that many of his peers felt the same way. ”By the time you come back for spring semester, you’ve had your fun. And I think that’s when people start to look for more serious, longterm relationships.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">That’s what happened to him. Kahn’s best friend had begun dating a classmate, and Kahn realized he aspired to a similar relationship with someone who shared his desire for a partnership based on mutual respect, compatible goals, and relaxed familiarity. “I wanted what my friend had,” he says.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010"> </p><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="419" width="300" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/1111210_relationship2_bro.jpg?itok=EZqXyNOc" /><p class="caption-text">Illustration by Michael Morgenstern</p></div></div></div><p class="bodycontent-2010">For those who embrace the hookup scene, a multitude of factors can be at play. From a demographic standpoint, young people are delaying marriage, so for most college students, and particularly those at elite institutions like Duke, pursuing jobs and careers is a top priority.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">“There’s a new emerging adulthood between being an adolescent and being an adult,” says Morgan. “So if you are a college student who plans to get married in their late twenties or early thirties, hooking up is indicative of wanting to be in a relationship and be sexually active, but not being ready to be married.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">A New York Times Magazine article published this past August outlined some of the significant differences between the current generation and its predecessors. Author Robin Marantz Henig noted that “two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married. And marriage occurs later than ever. The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was twenty-one for women and twenty-three for men; by 2009 it had climbed to twenty-six for women and twenty-eight for men, five years in a little more than a generation.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Shanahan notes that she has heard from students whose parents have made it very clear that college is not the place to court a prospective spouse. “I recently had one student, a senior, tell me that she hadn’t told her parents she’d been in the same relationship for four years because her parents would tell her to stop wasting her time. In other words, there was plenty of time down the road to have a boyfriend, and this was not the time. This was not the first time I heard this parental worry.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Other students say they welcome the hookup scene as a way to flaunt their burgeoning sexuality or define their sexual<br />identity. One young woman who graduated last May said that she became a fixture on the party/hookup scene—having sex with more than a dozen male peers in a six-month period—after she discovered her boyfriend had been cheating on her. “I embraced it wholeheartedly and convinced myself I could do it and not have any regrets,” says the woman, who asked to remain anonymous. “Part of that was my belief that having sex with anyone I wanted represented true female empowerment. But what I’ve come to realize is that true empowerment is having high self-esteem, not seeing how many guys you can get. Hookups are adult energy expressed in childish ways.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Tellingly, when students interviewed for this story (not all of whom are included here) were asked what they thought of peers who have multiple, random sexual partners, the word used most frequently was “sad.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">“It used to be that if a girl slept around, she was called a slut, but if a guy slept around, he was supposed to be congratulated,” says Michael Kahn. “But that’s changing. Everyone knows who the promiscuous people are. I think most people, men and women both, want to be able to look themselves in the mirror and respect what they see.”</p></div><div><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 400px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="265" width="400" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/graph2%20%281%29.jpg?itok=mzLmbwmk" /><p class="caption-text">Sexual activity in most recent sexual encounter by relationship type, seniors and freshmen combined.</p></div></div></div></div><div><p class="bodycontent-2010">One of the most significant and encouraging things that came out of the study, he says, is that “Duke is an incredibly diverse place, and that’s healthy. Students are going to find their own way. As educators, we like to think we are molding the next generation, that what we do here will profoundly shape how these students turn out. But that’s often not the case. Part of college life is experimentation. But the notion that they walk in here one way and the culture\dramatically changes their behavior is not true. There are lots of cultures here.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Sophomore Michael Kahn echoes the point. Duke offers a wide range of social options, and it’s up to the individual to decide what feels right for him or her, he says. “You can make Duke what you want it to be.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">“My advice for a new student would be to meet as many people as you can first semester, because those are the people who will become your friends. They will mean more to you than some random person you hook up with; they’ll be the ones you’ll want to spend your time with—and maybe have a relationship with.”</p></div> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-11-30T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, November 30, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/111210_relationship1.jpg" width="670" height="300" alt="Illustration by Michael Morgenstern" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/nov-dec-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nov - Dec 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Are today’s college students only interested in random sexual hookups? Is dating outdated? The answers—culled from one of the most comprehensive surveys of Duke students’ social lives ever conducted—may surprise you..</div></div></section> Tue, 30 Nov 2010 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500633 at https://alumni.duke.edu Do-It-Yourself Genetics https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/do-it-yourself-genetics <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p class="media-header top2">When we adopted Scooter in 2008, my partner and I were curious about the ancestry of our sleek five-month-old puppy. Clearly she was a Labrador retriever mix, as the Durham County animal shelter had labeled her. She possessed the classic Lab muzzle, along with a dense black coat and an eagerness to please. But what else was she? With that broad forehead and the mouthy way she wrestled at the dog park, might there be some pit bull in Scooter’s background (not that we would mind)?</p><p>If Scooter had come into our lives a few years earlier, we would have had to rely on educated guesses. That was before the genetic revolution began flooding the consumer market with DNA tests. Now, in exchange for a blood sample, cheek scraping, or vial of saliva, we are promised insight not only into our own genetic roots, but also those of our dogs. Anyone can gain access to a trove of information that will supposedly reveal where our ancestors lived and whether we possess risk markers for baldness, obesity, arthritis, or cancer.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">In 2003, the Human Genome Project completed the first detailed map of our DNA, sparking a frenzy of research. Ever since, that map has been scrutinized by scientists all over the world looking for markers for every imaginable illness and physical trait. But even before geneticists have fully digested these findings, entrepreneurs have begun designing test kits and selling them to the public. You can find out, at least according to the marketing claims, a good many things: your odds of suffering a heart attack or stroke; whether you’re descended from Genghis Khan; and even who might find your body odor alluring.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">These are the perfect products for the twenty-first-century curiosity seeker. We are a nation of voyeurs: We watch reality television, read strangers’ personal blogs, and constantly check our friends’ Facebook statuses. As a journalist, I’m inquisitive too, and I have the privilege of listening as people tell me their most intimate stories. So perhaps it was only natural that I turn that curiosity inward; I decided to embark upon my own genetic journey and report my discoveries along the way. Because the best adventures often feature a faithful canine companion (and because we muttowners are relentlessly curious about where our dogs came from), I decided to bring Scooter along with me.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">At the vet’s office, I watched as the receptionist sized up Scooter’s sinewy body. “Hello,” she said. “You’re a pit bull.” We would see. Scooter’s blood was drawn and sent to a canine genetics lab in Nebraska. The test, called the Wisdom Panel, identifies 170 breeds and claims an accuracy rate of 90 percent for mutts whose parents are purebreds, albeit from two different breeds. As I waited three weeks for her report, I started the process of submitting to my own DNA tests.</p><div><img alt="" class="media-image" height="95" width="670" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/111210_genetics_2.png" /><br /><div class="bodycontent-2010"><p>Traditionally, genetic testing has been the province of the medical establishment. Many couples learn about these tests as they embark on having families: It’s possible to screen for certain genetic defects in the parents before pregnancy, the fetus during pregnancy, and the baby immediately after birth. In the 1990s, as the science advanced, doctors rolled out a new type of test, which screens adults for mutations that predict cancer. Having a mutation doesn’t predetermine you’ll get sick, but it puts you at a much higher risk. The best known of these tests looks for alterations in two tumor-suppressing genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2. (The latter gene was located by a team that included Duke researchers.) A woman with a known BRCA mutation faces up to an 85 percent chance of developing breast cancer and a 60 percent chance of developing ovarian cancer. Women who test positive can discuss preventive steps, such as prophylactic mastectomy, with their physicians.</p></div></div><p class="bodycontent-2010">My own family has two BRCA risk factors: We’re Eastern European Jews, a population that carries the mutations in elevated numbers, and one of my great-grandfathers had breast cancer, which is rare in men. So I decided to start my genetic journey old-school—with a doctor-approved test in a hospital setting. I contacted the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center and scheduled an appointment with genetic counselor Robin Hutchison King ’00.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Before I arrived at the clinic, King took my medical history by phone. Using a formula based on ethnicity and family disease, she calculated my chances of having a BRCA mutation at 6.5 percent—low enough not to panic but still twenty times higher than normal. “That’s telling us that it’s worth testing,” she said.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">“If I were not doing an article, would you still recommend it?” I asked.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">“Yes,” King replied. “When there is breast or ovarian cancer in a Jewish family, then it’s definitely worth testing.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">King walked me through the science, and we talked about what all the possible outcomes might mean. She told me about the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which protects patients from insurance and employment bias. And we discussed the price. For $460, covered partly by insurance, the test would search for three mutations commonly found in Eastern European Jews. I signed a consent form, and King led me down the hallway to have my blood drawn.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Over the eleven days it took for the results to come back, I tried to keep my anxiety levels manageable. The odds of being fine were overwhelmingly in my favor, but when I mentioned the male breast cancer in my family during telephone interviews with genetics experts, I noticed some uncomfortable pauses at the other end of the line. Each time I detected such a pause, I felt a little less like a detached journalist. I kept pacing the hallway between my living room and kitchen, asking my partner repeated questions that began, “What if…?” I wondered how I would break the news to my female relatives, who would likely bear the brunt of the mutation if they had inherited it. I began worrying that I’d acted irresponsibly by not first consulting with them. It was a great relief, then, when King called with the results: The DNA analysis showed no abnormalities in my BRCA genes.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Feeling more assured on life-and-death issues, at least for the moment, I turned to a less urgent, but more intriguing, question: Where in the world, literally, did I come from? Like many Americans, my family tree has invisible roots: My great-grandparents emigrated from Eastern Europe 100 years ago, leaving behind all records of our collective history. Without the benefit of genealogical records, perhaps my genes would tell me something about my ancestral past.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">About forty companies and one nonprofit organization promise to help consumers recover some of that history. By analyzing your DNA, they claim, they can provide a general sense of where your forebears originated. There’s a catch, though. The two most popular kinds of tests—mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA—trace only a limited number of your ancestors. Mitochondrial tests follow your direct maternal line. They look at genetic material that’s passed from mother to child unchanged inside the cellular power plants called the mitochondria. Y-chromosome tests, available only to men, do the same for the paternal line. The problem is, if you go back ten generations, you have 1,024 ancestors, only two of whom stay genetically intact down these same-sex lines.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">With that in mind, I ordered two separate tests. The first came from the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project, which for $107 will analyze either your Y-chromosome or your mitochondrial DNA from a scraping of the inside of your cheek. The Genographic Project is a five-year effort to collect 100,000 DNA samples from around the world and construct a history of human migration. (Some Native-American organizations oppose the project, fearing that the new data could be used to deny their historic land claims.)</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">The other test came from 23andMe, a Silicon Valley company that, for $499, takes a deeper look into your genome. After its technicians analyze your saliva (the kit provides a plastic vial and miniature funnel for spitting), you get your personal report on its password-protected website. There you’ll find reams of information, not just about your roots, but also about possible disease risks (more on that later). Unlike most companies, 23andMe looks at ancestry markers throughout your genome—not just on the Y-chromosome or inside the mitochondria—capturing at least vague signals from your entire clan.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 670px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="278" width="670" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/111210_genetics_4.png" /><p class="caption-text"><strong>Making of a Man</strong>: Yeoman’s mitochondrial genome, above, shows a comparison of his DNA to that of the Cambridge Reference Sequence, a forerunner of the Human Genome Project that serves as a baseline of sorts for genealogical sequencing. Highlighted differences are mutations that cause the replacement of one nucleotide with another. For example, a pyrimidine base (C) is exchanged with another pyrimidine (T) or with a purine (A or G). These differences allow researchers to reconstruct the migratory paths of Yeoman’s ancestors.</p></div></div></div></p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Taking two tests, it turns out, is more confusing than taking one. When the results came back, National Geographic and 23andMe agreed on one thing: My mitochondrial DNA put me in a population subgroup, or haplogroup, called N9a. But their online presentations were strikingly different.</p><div><p class="bodycontent-2010">National Geographic showed me an interactive map and video describing what it called my maternal ancestors’ early migration. From East Africa, where they hunted antelope on the savannah, my forebears migrated to the Middle East about 50,000 years ago, then “went on to inhabit most of western Eurasia.” It seemed like a generic explanation, and on closer inspection, I understood why: National Geographic’s narrative applies to everyone in the enormous N population group, which has been described as “one of the two major trunks emerging from the original African root.” The Genographic Project’s director, Spencer Wells, explained to me that N9a has not been studied enough to warrant its own migration map. “We don’t want to overstate what we know,” he said.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">23andMe gave me far more targeted information, focusing on where members of N9a live today. My subgroup is an “extremely rare” branch of that large trunk, the report said. “Its only concentrations are among indigenous inhabitants of the Malay peninsula.” I learned that I have mitochondrial cousins sprinkled throughout Asia, from southern China to Kazakhstan. “Ancient China’s famous Terracotta Army”—8,000 clay soldiers guarding Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s tomb—“was constructed by men bearing haplogroup N9a,” 23andMe’s website offered as a tidbit.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">The Asia connection fascinated me. It didn’t surprise the geneticists I interviewed. Wells, who has worked extensively in Central Asia, speculated that several Jewish groups from the region—including the Khazars, a medieval people whose kings adopted Judaism—might have migrated to Europe and blended into the local gene pool. Researchers recently have been studying why some Jews possess this unusual Asian mutation set. “It’s very exciting that you got this result,” he said. “Your DNA is going to help us piece together this new story.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Even so, Wells did note that DNA cannot pinpoint my origins with certainty. His colleagues agree. Charmaine Royal, an associate research professor at Duke’s Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (IGSP), says genetic research has great potential to help reconstruct the human story. But she wants the public to understand more clearly the limits of today’s tests. “Genetics does tell us something about our ancestry,” she says. “My main concern is that the companies need to be clear with consumers about what they are and are not getting. There are people who think they’re getting a whole lot of information when they do lineage tests. The companies, for the most part, don’t say anything about limitations.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">The tests that have stirred up the most controversy are the DNA-based health kits sold directly to consumers over the Internet, offering results without ever involving a doctor or genetic counselor. These DIY tests promise to calculate your risk for all kinds of ailments, including heart attack, Alzheimer’s, and various forms of cancer.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">The new at-home tests are a direct outgrowth of the Human Genome Project, a thirteen-year effort to identify the 20,000-plus genes and determine the sequence of the 3 billion chemical base pairs in human DNA. With that mapping now considered complete, scientists are able to scan the genome quickly, looking for tiny differences between people who have certain illnesses and others who don’t. These variations, which occur at specific locations on the DNA, are called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs (pronounced “snips”). Many of the latest studies by geneticists studying specific diseases ferret out small associations. For example, someone with a certain SNP or set of SNPs might be 10 percent more likely than the general population to have a particular disease: Instead of a 24 percent chance of developing Type 2 diabetes, that person might have a 26 percent chance.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Based on identifying high-risk SNPs, the most ambitious DNA kits scan for many diseases at once. The two big players in this arena, 23andMe and deCODE genetics, calculate their customers’ risks and post the information to websites accessible by password. 23andMe also sells customers’ genetic data, along with other personal information that customers self-report, to researchers. The information is aggregated, and identifying details are removed.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Anne Wojcicki, who cofounded 23andMe after working as a health-care investor, says her company is helping create “a radical transformation” in medicine, giving customers information about their risk factors, then allowing them to make their own lifestyle decisions. “They’re going to be able to say, ‘Oh, I love wine, but I see I’m at higher risk for breast cancer. Should I modify my wine consumption?’ ” she says.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">But critics call these DNA tests poor predictors. Many of the diseases in the 23andMe panel are caused by multiple genes working together—some we know of, but many we don’t—along with factors like diet, stress, and environmental contamination. Scientists have discovered interesting links, but their findings are preliminary and not well understood. Nor are the genetic variations necessarily causal. “For the vast majority of diseases that most of us will get, we remain more in the dark than illuminated,” says David Goldstein, director of the Duke Center for Human Genome Variations. There’s a reason these consumer tests are often called “recreational genomics”—according to skeptics, they titillate more than educate.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">A major concern among scientists and physicians is that the private companies are putting test results directly into the public’s hands without the consultation of a doctor and the expertise of a genetic counselor—think of ordering and interpreting your own mammogram. Experts worry that consumers might make unhealthy decisions based on their results. “I’m most concerned with those who get their tests and believe they’re home free,” says Susanne Haga, an assistant research professor at Duke’s IGSP.“They may say, ‘That’s great, I’m not at risk for diabetes. I can eat more fat and sugar than I would have before.’ That’s what we definitely don’t want to encourage.” On the flip side, Haga notes, someone deemed at high risk for a disease might undergo unnecessary and invasive testing.</p></div><div><p class="bodycontent-2010">Superstitiously, I waited a week after 23andMe notified me by e-mail that my reports were viewable online. I wanted to brace for any alarming news. When I finally clicked through the links that took me to various disease reports, most of them brought amusement or relief. I learned that I have a “greatly decreased” likelihood of male pattern baldness—a surprise given my deeply receded hairline—and a propensity to dislike Brussels sprouts, my favorite vegetable, based on my inherited ability to taste bitterness. As for more serious conditions, my SNPs pointed to a lowered risk for heart attack, rheumatoid arthritis, and celiac disease, and only the slimmest elevation for obesity and colorectal cancer.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Nothing remarkable, I told myself. Then I realized there was one disease risk I had forgotten to check.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">I logged back into my results—and felt my stomach contort as I read the computer screen. According to 23andMe’s calculation, I had a 31 percent chance of developing prostate cancer over my lifetime, twice the average for European males.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in the U.S. It kills almost 30,000 people a year, and the surgery can leave patients with urinary incontinence and sexual impotence. In 2008, the<span class="pubtitle"> New England Journal of Medicine</span> published an article linking five particular SNPs to prostate cancer. I found out that I have four of those five markers.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">By the time I read my results, I knew that SNPs were not considered reliable disease predictors, and that 23andMe’s calculations excluded diet, family history, and undiscovered genetic factors. I also knew that prostate malignancies often grew so slowly that most patients die with the cancer rather than from it.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">That didn’t stop me from panicking. <span class="pubtitle">The Washington Post</span> had just reported that deCODE’s chief scientific officer, Jeffrey Gulcher, had received results similar to mine and was shortly thereafter diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer. Gulcher and I were both slightly shy of fifty, the age at which screening is recommended. It didn’t matter that his illness was a statistical fluke. The coincidence was too creepy to shake off.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">I had dinner with friends that night, but I didn’t say a word during the conversation and can’t remember what we ate. I was pulled deep into myself, imagining the specter of a tumor growing inside me, contemplating my mortality, engaging in a bit of supernatural bargaining. I e-mailed my friend Duane Culler, a former Duke genetic counselor and now a senior genetic associate at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland. “Should I be worried?” I asked, downplaying the fact that I already was. Culler responded immediately. “The first thing to do is take a deep breath,” he wrote. “Tell yourself this test isn’t used clinically because it hasn’t been validated.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Over the next week, several physicians pointed out that I’d fallen into a trap of at-home tests: I had learned about a risk that may, or may not, exist without a genetic counselor on board to help me interpret the science. I had gained enough information to feel anxious, but not enough to do anything useful. “It’s, frankly, exactly the kind of situation I worry about,” said James Evans, a professor of genetics and medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “You and I both know what most people are going to do with these results. It’s hard to sleep at night with somebody telling you that you have an increased risk of prostate cancer.” Patients will ask their doctors to screen them earlier than recommended—and the results, Evans said, could take them down a path toward inconclusive biopsies and pointless prostate removal.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Much later—after I had consulted with King, the genetic counselor at Duke’s Cancer Center; talked with my own physician; learned more about my family history; and decided to defer screening until I turned fifty—I told the story to Misha Angrist, an assistant professor at Duke’s IGSP and author of <em>Here Is A Human Being</em>. “I would draw the exact opposite conclusion from Jim Evans,” he said. “This spurred a fact-finding mission, which turned up useful information.” Once I survived my initial “freak-out,” Angrist said, I was able to make a better informed decision about my health.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">But some consumers lack the knowledge, or the stomach, to handle scary genetic data. For that reason, Angrist says, not everyone should purchase over-the-counter tests. For those who do, he says, “this is one of the challenges: to take this information in perspective, and to be more accepting of the freak-out.”</p></div><div><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 670px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="278" width="670" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/111210_genetics_5.png" /><p class="caption-text"><strong>The results are in</strong>: Yeoman’s test results indicated mitochondrial cousins “sprinkled throughout Asia, from China to Kazakhstan”; Scooter’s suggested she wasn’t the Lab mix she seemed to be. Credit: Jared Lazarus</p></div></div></div></div><div><p class="bodycontent-2010">When I told friends about my genetic journey, they listened politely to my tales of cancer terror and Asian ancestry. But their ears often pricked up when I talked about my dog’s DNA test. Durham, it seems, is a city of mutts, and all the dog owners I know have a nagging curiosity about their pets’ true origins.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">It turns out that the test Scooter took, the Mars Wisdom Panel, emerged from serious human medical research. At Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, geneticist Elaine Ostrander and genetic statistician Leonid Kruglyak recognized that some breeds are plagued by specific conditions. Scottish terriers, for example, have astronomically high rates of bladder cancer, and Doberman Pinschers are prone to narcolepsy. To help locate the disease markers, the two scientists mapped the genetic architecture of the canine kingdom, looking for the “DNA fingerprints,” as Ostrander calls them, that distinguish one breed from another. Their research was then licensed to Mars Veterinary, a British firm whose corporate parent also sells candy and pet food. (Ostrander and Kruglyak have since moved on to other jobs.)</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">The Wisdom Panel is not a medical screening. “There’s very little evidence to suggest that the single-gene diseases that are found at high frequency in some of the breeds are actually that common in mixed-breed dogs,” says Neale Fretwell, the R&D director for Mars Veterinary. Instead, the tests mostly serve to satisfy the curiosity of owners like me.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">Two weeks after we submitted Scooter’s blood, her results came back: Our “Lab mix” had absolutely no markers for Labrador retriever. Instead, she showed traces of boxer, chow chow, and American Staffordshire terrier (a type of pit bull), along with less reliable signals for Chinese shar-pei and bearded collie.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">“She looks like a black Lab,” I protested to Paul Jones, a geneticist who helped design the panel.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">“A lot of people think they’ve got a Lab,” he replied. “What you often achieve by mixing different guard-dog types—which is virtually all of what’s in your dog—is a mixed, outbred dog that ends up looking very much like a Labrador. It’s a story we’ve heard a fair few times.”</p><p class="bodycontent-2010">This has made for good conversation at the dog park. While Scooter tussles playfully with the other dogs—many of them mutts with Lab-like faces—I explain to the owners why their pets might not be Labradors after all. But then Scooter will break from the pack, find an errant tennis ball, and bring it back with the hope that I’ll throw it. She can barely control herself from springing off the ground in anticipation. DNA is not always destiny: Scooter might have zero retriever in her, but she still fetches with the best of them.</p><p class="bodycontent-2010"> </p><p class="bodycontent-2010"> </p><p class="byline" style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #ffffff;"><em><span class="byline">Yeoman is a freelance journalist whose work appears in </span>Audubon<span class="byline">, </span>AARP The Magazine<span class="byline"> and</span> O, The Oprah Magazine<span class="byline">.</span></em></p></div> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-11-30T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, November 30, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/111210_genetics_1.jpg" width="670" height="278" alt="Survey says: Genetic testing yielded unexpected results for both Yeoman and his dog, Scooter. Credit: Jared Lazarus" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/barry-yeoman" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Barry Yeoman</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/nov-dec-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nov - Dec 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The mapping of the human genome inspired not only a flood of scientific research, but also a flurry of commercial genetic tests aimed at the curious consumer. A Duke Magazine writer submitted his DNA and gained access to a trove of information that purported to reveal where his ancestors lived and his risk of becoming obese or developing arthritis or cancer.</div></div></section> Tue, 30 Nov 2010 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500630 at https://alumni.duke.edu