Profile

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Eddie Cano Gamez

My CV

  • Current Job:

    PhD student in genomics

    • The most exciting thing that's happened this year in my research area:

      Last year, a group of scientists developed a new diagnostic test. This test identifies people at high risk of coronary artery disease (which means they are very likely to suffer from heart attacks). The most exciting thing about this is that the test works exclusively by reading the person’s genome (i.e. selected sections across the entirety of their DNA). Because our DNA remains almost unchanged throughout the entirety of our life, this means we can tell if someone is at risk from the very moment they are born with a simple blood sample. The symptoms of the disease might not appear until people are in their 50s or 60s, but people can now find out beforehand. This means they can take preventive actions like taking extra care of their diet, exercising or even taking medications to prevent it.

    • My latest work:

      My current work tries to understand why people develop autoimmune diseases. In these diseases the immune system (which is usually in charge of protecting us from infections) starts attacking and destroying healthy organs in our body. Some examples are lupus, arthritis and multiple sclerosis. However, it is unknown what causes the immune system to attack in such an uncontrolled way. It is believed that the cause could be a combination of our genes and our environment. To answer this, I study the interaction between these two factors by exposing people’s immune cells to different environments. I then analyse the cells using a mix of genetics and data science.

    • My favourite misconception about my area of science:

      My favourite misconception in genetics is the idea of “designer babies”. This is idea, which was probably fuelled by novels like Brave New World, is not altogether correct. For example, people think we could design a person who is 5 ft 9, has green eyes, is intelligent, musically talented and free of disease. And, while some of these things are possible (for example, editing eye colour would not be that hard), others are not doable at all. Height, for example, is influenced by thousands of genes (each of which contributes a few millimetres). So we would have to edit thousands of sections of the DNA to design such a baby. The same is true for intelligence. As a point of comparison, geneticists today struggle to edit even two genes at a time. Moreover, even if this were feasible, a lot of those genes have multiple functions. Thus, editing thousands of gene would surely have secondary consequences.