Living Smart

III SCIENCE & STEM EDUCATION 098 099 hold so much material before it collapses on its accumulated gravity, which is what a black hole is. Like many great scientific breakthroughs, this black hole photograph spawns a plethora of questions and possibilities. For example, we know the M87 black hole emits a powerful jet of subatomic particles at light speed, but how does the black hole generate this incredible stream, and how is it related to the matter that is captured by the event horizon? This historical event not only satisfied a long-time objective of astronomers/cosmologists (a direct image of a black hole), and now, we scientists can tread onto new frontiers to learn more about the universe we live in. Published on May 08, 2019 Testing times in era of DNA mapping Dr. ZHAO Yongqian Former Research Assistant Professor, Division of Life Science, Former Junior Fellow, HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study A few weeks ago, the Department of Health advised the public not to purchase genetic mapping tests on their own because it is hard to ascertain their professional standard and quality after a political party openly accused eight firms offering such tests of exaggerating claims that they are able to identify children’ s talents and character traits. Actually, genetic testing is rather novel in science, having only appeared less than a century ago. As early as 1940s, scientists began to learn that genetic information about living things was carried by DNA. Until 1975 when British scientist Frederick Sanger invented a DNA sequencing technology, “Sanger sequencing”, humans recognized the nature of biological inheritance at the molecular level. In the 1990s, an international team of scientists launched the Human Genome Project with the goal of sequencing the entire human DNA. This not only broadened understanding of genes but also greatly advanced the maturity of gene sequencing technology. Some doctors and biologists began experimenting with sequencing techniques to diagnose and study genetic diseases caused by mutations. A genetic screen can potentially diagnose more than 1,200 genetic disorders and chromosomal abnormalities. However, the public knew nothing about genetic tests, and did not care about the relationship between their genes