This week, if the human genome is a parts list...

Now we're basically in a position to understand exactly what lacking each part means.

And the scientist who became a politician.

Running for public office is and was more difficult than getting my PhD in physics.

Plus how new research on East Antarctica is ringing alarm bells.

This is the Nature podcast for April the 13th, 2017.

I'm Kerry Smith.

And I'm Adam Levy. The genome is often described as a parts list for building a body.

In the human genome, the list has about 18,000 entries.

But what if one part is removed, or in a scientific language, knocked out?

Characterization of those knockouts have actually been one of the main tools for us to understand what any given gene in the genome actually does.

This is Seeker Katherason, and he's talking about mice.

Scientists can deliberately knock genes out in model organisms like the mouse,

but now they're setting their sights on a knockout project for humans.

Disclaimer, nobody is running around knocking out human genes as part of a grizzly experiment.

Geneticists are instead looking for naturally occurring human knockouts,

people carrying genes that are completely non-functional.

Cheaper and more widely deployable sequencing methods

are making it possible to go looking for people

who each have a different part missing.

And now we're basically in a position to understand exactly what lacking each part means.

Saker and his colleagues refer to this effort as the Human Knockout Project.

...