Human Genome Cataloging Project - India's first - To be launched

genome

India is all set to launch very first human genome mapping job by October this year, an action that will aid researchist to get closer to establishing effective and advanced treatment for dealing with deadly diseases such as cancer. In the initial stage of what is called - The Genome India Project; genome data of 10,000 Indians will be cataloged. This task is a initiative from the Department of Biotechnology under the Ministry of Science and Technology, India.

Key points

• It is a gene mapping project involving 20 leading institutions including, the Indian Institute of Science( IISc) in Bengaluru and a few Indian Institution of Technology (IITs).
• The first stage of the prohepr will look at samples of 10,000 persons from all over the country to from a grid that will enable the development of a reference genome.
• The centre of Brain Research, which is a autonomous institute in the IISc, Bengaluru, will serve as the nodal point of the project.

About the Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying and mapping all of the genes of human genome from both a physical and a functional standpoint. The project formally launched in 1990 and was declared complete on April 14, 2003. Funding came from the US Government through the National Institute of Health (NIH). The Human Genome Project originally aimed to map the nucleotide contained in a human haploid reference genome. Most of the Government sponsored sequencing was performed in twenty universities and research centers in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany and China.

Definition of Genome

A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all its genes. It contains all the information needed to build and maintain that organism. Be sequencing the genome, researchist can find out the functions of genes and identify which of them are critical for life.