No not a Gnome, Genome. I had to check myself on Google to ensure that I had the correct spelling, so there will be no judgements from me if you get those mixed up. I haven’t given much consideration to the human Genome before this week; I briefly recall hearing it a couple of times but I have never looked into it and would be unable to give even a basic run down of what it is. On Friday I was driving to work, and as I like to do I was listening to a Podcast; Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk was the Podcast of choice in this instance. President Clinton was the guest [1], with a large section of the interview talking about the Human Genome Project, this peaked my interest and gave inspiration for this blog. So lets get going.
![Bill Clinton & Neil deGrasse Tyson [fig1]](http://i0.wp.com/laymansscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/clinton-tyson-star-talk.jpg?resize=300%2C280)
What is a Genome?
The genome can be described as “All our genes together” [2], and in 2003 the Human Genome Project was completed, having achieved it’s target of “the complete mapping and understanding of all the genes of human beings” [2]. However what does this entail? What are the implications of this?
“A genome is an organism’s complete set of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)“ [3] which is made up of the base pairs of DNA (more of that in another post, to be written). “The human genome contains approximately 3 billion of these base pairs” [3], and it is of my understanding that the mapping of the human genome is the library of how each of these base pairs can be fitted together, in other words “Having the essentially complete sequence of the human genome is similar to having all the pages of a manual needed to make the human body” [3]. Quite a remarkable achievement.
What are the benefits?
“Genome-based research will eventually enable medical science to develop highly effective diagnostic tools, to better understand the health needs of people based on their individual genetic make-ups, and to design new and highly effective treatments for disease” [3]. Thats a pretty huge benefit; having a greater understanding of pretty much anything will mean that the observer is able to push the limits further, and even diagnose issues. So, similar to the ‘manual’ mentioned above, having a greater understanding of the human body & makeup will enable scientists to enhance drugs and potentially find cures for diseases, which otherwise would have been unachievable due to not knowing what they are fighting.
To expand on this slightly, and dip our feet into another area of research, Artificial Intelligence is being utilised in order to quickly process individuals data and find patterns, allowing scientists to identify & diagnose uncommon illnesses. An example of this is Berg, an American company which is working with the UK genome study, whereby “Berg uses artificial intelligence ‘to look at patterns in the data to find areas in the biology that are fingerprints of that disease’ ” [4] which will allow the company (or more specifically, their AI) to “look at what is going on inside cells, studying all the proteins, the lipids that form cell membranes and govern cell communication and the way cells metabolise energy” [4].
As you can see, the medical benefits of such an understanding of the human body are simply astounding, and the benefits are going to keep on coming; Technology, such as AI, can be used to drive that understanding even further.
[1] StarTalk (2015) Decoding Science an Politics with Bill Clinton [Online]
[2] National Human Genome Research Institute (2015) An Overview of the Human Genome Project [Online]
[3] National Human Genome Research Institute (2010) Frequently Asked Questions [Online]
[4] Reuters (2015) U.S. biotech to apply artificial intelligence to UK genome study [Online]