The Decade of Biology

In the Guardian, Ian Sample writes that the last 10 years saw the "rise of biology" and that genetics was central to that move to the forefront. The first step, he says, was the sequencing of the human genome early in the decade. That then led to better sequencing technology and the sequencing of many organisms and then to uncovering variants linked to disease. "Scientific revolutions have a long history of taking humans down a peg or two," Sample writes. "The genetics revolution was no different. As more organisms submitted to genetic analysis, scientists learned that humans were not so different from other organisms. We share more than 95% of our genes with chimps and around 30% with bananas."