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Are Delta-FosB, or 5-HTT the Obama Genes?

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


The Atlantic featured a captivating fantasy in its November issue about a scenario to assassinate the U.S. president in 2016 by using a bioweapon specifically tailored to his genetic makeup—a virus that targeted the commander in chief and no one else.

A great plot for a Hollywood thriller. But will we really see four years from now an engineered pathogen that could home in on just one person's DNA, a lethal microbe that could be transmitted from person to person by a sneeze?

The authors, including "genomic futurist" Andrew Hessel and cybercrime expert Marc Goodman, both faculty at Ray Kurzweil's Singularity University, acknowledge that the plausibility of a hit on the president by the time of the next election might be reaching a bit.


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A personal gene bomb monogrammed for Barack Obama is still beyond the technical acumen of the best genetic engineers. But there is one good use beyond the cloaks and daggers to which the president's genes might eventually be put. As Obama begins his second term next week, he has begun to contemplate his historical legacy. For his third act—that is, once he leaves office—he might consider extending that legacy further by undertaking a whole genome scan.

Obama's genome, as much as that of anyone alive, might help a bit in the long-running search for genes associated with emotional and psychological resilience. Anyone who runs for president and gets the nomination has to display a measure of mental toughness, and so might carry a set of such genes. Romney was a toughie too—recall the first debate—but he was also to the manner born, doing what was expected for someone of his breeding. Obama is different. As a child, no one was handicapping "Barry" as presidential material, the guy who put in his high school yearbook a thank you to his pot dealer—and who emerged from a childhood (absent a father and sometimes a mother) that might have left others with more than just transient trauma. From the standpoint of human resilience studies, Obama is an extraordinary specimen.

The genetic analysis might, for instance, look at Obama's Delta-FosB gene, 5-HTT or a slew of other genes, particular versions of which are purported to provide protection against life's stressors. Behavioral genetics has always had to confront conflicting findings in which one study finds a hint of an effect for a trait like psychological resilience, whereas the next one finds nothing. An Obama gene test might furnish one of the strongest data points gathered to date. Of course, most statisticians would be duly unimpressed. Even a presidential genome is just one data point, an "n" of one, as they would say. But in a field where replication of results always remain elusive, an Obama gene scan might be as good as it gets right now in the search for the biological underpinnings of what allows some people to roll with the hardest of punches

Source: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

 

Gary Stix, Scientific American's neuroscience and psychology editor, commissions, edits and reports on emerging advances and technologies that have propelled brain science to the forefront of the biological sciences. Developments chronicled in dozens of cover stories, feature articles and news stories, document groundbreaking neuroimaging techniques that reveal what happens in the brain while you are immersed in thought; the arrival of brain implants that alleviate mood disorders like depression; lab-made brains; psychological resilience; meditation; the intricacies of sleep; the new era for psychedelic drugs and artificial intelligence and growing insights leading to an understanding of our conscious selves. Before taking over the neuroscience beat, Stix, as Scientific American's special projects editor, oversaw the magazine's annual single-topic special issues, conceiving of and producing issues on Einstein, Darwin, climate change, nanotechnology and the nature of time. The issue he edited on time won a National Magazine Award. Besides mind and brain coverage, Stix has edited or written cover stories on Wall Street quants, building the world's tallest building, Olympic training methods, molecular electronics, what makes us human and the things you should and should not eat. Stix started a monthly column, Working Knowledge, that gave the reader a peek at the design and function of common technologies, from polygraph machines to Velcro. It eventually became the magazine's Graphic Science column. He also initiated a column on patents and intellectual property and another on the genesis of the ingenious ideas underlying new technologies in fields like electronics and biotechnology. Stix is the author with his wife, Miriam Lacob, of a technology primer called Who Gives a Gigabyte: A Survival Guide to the Technologically Perplexed (John Wiley & Sons, 1999).

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