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Knowing your genetic code could lengthen your life
Fifteen years ago this month, the full human genome sequence was published for the first time. Since then technology has markedly speeded up genomic sequencing and reduced the cost. But have those hoped-for medical breakthroughs materialised?
Sequencing the human genome took 10 years and cost about 30billion.Nowadvancesincomputingpowerhaveseenthecostfalltounder500. A British firm has even developed a hand-held reader that can sequence genetic material in minutes. Dr Gordon Sanghera, the firm’s chief executive, talks about creating “the internet of living things – real time connection of live DNA information” using such portable devices. And the applications won’t just be for healthcare, he argues, but for establishing the provenance of food in restaurants, or the presence of dangerous microbes in water supplies. It could also be used for analysing DNA evidence at crime scenes.
Dr Sanghera believes the device could eventually be used to diagnose common infections at home and so reduce needless trips to the doctor. Within the next 10 years, “everyone will get sequenced at birth”, he says, and we’ll be able to assess whether we have genetic dispositions to particular diseases and take preventative steps accordingly.
More than 500,000 human genomes have now been sequenced worldwide. But it is how this data will be combined with other data and analysed that is causing excitement. The UK Biobank has enlisted 500,000 volunteers who’ve shared their medical data anonymously in the hope of improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illnesses. Scientists at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, used Biobank data to highlight the increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes among shift workers1. The researchers found that people who worked irregular shift patterns were 44% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than people working permanent day shifts. Now, genetic data will be added to the mix.
We are at the beginning of a revolution in healthcare. But dramatic medical breakthroughs have been tougher to come by than many had hoped at the start of the genomics era. “The completion of the human genome project held out much hope for the better understanding and treatment of diseases. But as is usually the case, we had underestimated the complexity of the relationship of genome to disease and health,” concludes IBM’s Laxmi Parida.
Yet this is only the beginning – in the genomics era, healthcare is irrevocably changing.
(Adi Gaskell e Matthew Wall. www.bbc.com, 27.04.2018. Adaptado.)
1 shift workers: those whose work takes place on a schedule outside the traditional 9 am-5 pm day.
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