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Asked by anon-231239 to Steven, Jessica, Haafizah on 21 Nov 2019.
Question: How has mapping the human genome mapping helped prevent disease?
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Jessica Mitchell answered on 21 Nov 2019:
This is such a great question. Mapping our genome has helped us learn loads about human evolution and individual differences, in terms of diseases we now know that certain genes can make people more likely to get a disease so we can screen people and offer treatment or preventative action before a disease takes hold. We can also map diseases and how/where/when they occur to identify the people most at risk of catching them, this means we can work with certain groups of people to help keep them healthy before they even catch the disease.
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Clio commented on :
I went to a conference last year and listen to a talk by a company that is using what’s called omics databases which looks at gene expression data bases, human genome etc to map out pathways to determine the best way to stop a human disease. Their work has shown that you can dramatically cut down the time it takes to get a drug to market by using this sort of large data and computing. I think they got a successful drug into human trials in about 2 or 3 years rather than the 10 years it normally takes. Using pre-exisiting transcriptomic (genes expression), proteomics (protein expression) datasets using a powerful computer also helps to narrow down the list of potential drug candidates which will subsequently mean much lower numbers of animals used for testing. Bioinformatics is a growing area that uses science information and computer coding to help look at the wide picture of biology and find the best way to treat a disease. It’s an exciting area to look into as I think molecular data for drug discovery will be crucial as the technology expands.