Marjolein Kriek

Memorial to the heritage of Marjolein Kriek in Nijmegen.
Detail of computer printout:

Marjolein Kriek (born November 22, 1973 in Leiden ) is a Dutch clinical human geneticist . In 2008 she was the first woman whose complete genetic makeup was sequenced and published.

Marjolein Kriek received her PhD in Biomedicine from the University of Leiden in 2002 . Her doctoral thesis deals with genetic testing in people with intellectual disabilities . Her further research at the Universitair Medisch Centrum in Leiden (LUMC) related to similar topics.

Selection as a test person

Mid-2000s was Krieks institute a next-generation sequencer , a lab robot genome - sequencing . Shortly before this, scientists in the USA had deciphered the genome of Nobel Prize winner James Watson , who in 1953 together with Francis Crick had presented the elucidation of the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). At the initiative of the institute's director Gert-Jan van Ommen , Crick's name made her colleagues ask them to carry out the experiment with their genetic makeup. Kriek: “My two bosses came up with this over a couple of drinks in a pub. I wasn't even there. ”Kriek, who was pregnant at the time, gave her consent after much deliberation and consultation with her family.

On May 26, 2008, the university announced that the sequence analysis of Kriek's genetic material had been terminated after nine months; the exact results were published later.

Relevance of DNA Analysis

Marjolein Kriek is one of five people whose entire genome has been deciphered, while Kriek is the first woman and the first person from Europe. Of the four men who had previously been decrypted, two came from the United States and two belonged to the African tribe of the Yoruba . By disclosing her data, Kriek learned that there is a hereditary deafness in her family. Her children could have been born without hearing if her husband had also been a carrier of this genetic error.

monument

In 2011 a memorial - a gift from the Center for Society and Genomics - for Marjolein Kriek's DNA was unveiled in front of the Huygensgebouw at Radboud University Nijmegen ; previously it was on view from 2008 to 2009 as part of the artist Bas van Vlijmen's Reboot art project next to a monument to Erasmus of Rotterdam on Grotekerkplein in Rotterdam . This was intended to point out the contradictions between the humanistic conception of man by Erasmus and the power of what is “technically feasible”. Kriek's comment on this memorial in an interview with Die Zeit : " And I'm not even dead. I haven't done anything special either!" At the opening of an exhibition on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's theses, her DNA was found on the dress of Marjolein Kriek projects.

Exceptional media response

The topic was also taken up in the popular Dutch comic strip Fokke & Sokke : “Marjolein Kriek ??!” Asks Fokke. "Why wasn't Scarlett Johansson's complete DNA unraveled?"

literature

• Ulrich Bahnsen: Reading life. What the blood reveals about our future . Droemer, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-426-27711-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Marjolein Kriek. Curriculum vitae. In: openaccess.leidenuniv.nl. October 1, 2006, accessed September 15, 2017 (Dutch). 
2. ↑ Curriculum Vitae - Marjolein Kriek. openaccess.leidenuniv.nl, October 1, 2006, accessed on September 26, 2017 (x).  (pdf)
3. ↑ Bahnsen, Reading Life , p. 30
4. ↑ Dutch Doctor is first woman to have DNA mapped. In: MINA. June 1, 2008, accessed September 26, 2017 . 
5. ↑ First Female DNA Sequenced. Science Daily, May 27, 2008, accessed September 26, 2017 . 
6. ↑ Dr. Marjolein Kriek, First Woman to Have Her DNA Sequence Determined. In: findingdulcinea.com. November 7, 2010, accessed September 26, 2017 . 
7. ↑ Bahnsen, Reading Life , p. 31
8. ↑ Artwork van de vrouw as genoom bij Huygensgebouw. (No longer available online.) In: ru.nl. Formerly in the original ; accessed on September 26, 2017 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
9. ↑ EU moet terug naar basis. In: Erasmus Magazine. September 23, 2017. Retrieved September 26, 2017 (Dutch). 
10. ↑ Ulrich Bahnsen: DNA decoding: "Fortunately, I am healthy". In: zeit.de . December 4, 2012, accessed September 26, 2017 . 
11. ↑ ^{a b} Kevin Davies: The $ 1,000 Genome. Simon and Schuster, 2010, ISBN 978-1-416-57018-9 , p. 213 ( limited preview in Google book search).