South India critical in identifying disease-causing genes: Lander

February 28, 2015 12:00 am | Updated 08:27 am IST - Bengaluru:

Eric S. Lander, one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project, delivering a lecturein Bengaluru on Friday. — PHOTO: K. MURALI KUMAR

Eric S. Lander, one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project, delivering a lecturein Bengaluru on Friday. — PHOTO: K. MURALI KUMAR

With a high level of consanguinity (marriage of close relatives) as well as a well-established scientific research base, south India, and Bengaluru in particular, is critical in the global search for genes that cause diseases, said Eric S. Lander, one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project that has mapped over 3 billion bases (letters) of the human genetic code.

He was delivering a lecture on ‘The human genome and beyond: A 35-year journey of genomic medicine’ as part of the three-city Cell Press-TNQ Distinguished Lectureship Series that concluded in the city on Friday.

‘Best positioned’

“Places like Andhra Pradesh have around 15 per cent prevalence of consanguinity… while, Bengaluru is the centre of Indian molecular biology … Research here is best positioned to define the ‘null phenotype’,” said Dr. Lander.

The null phenotype is a mutant copy of a gene that lacks the functionality present in the gene. With consanguinity producing off-spring that share similar genetic code, these families provide the ideal base for geneticists to identity disease-causing genes.

In order to take the rapidly advancing genomics research into medicine, Dr. Lander said a global collaboration — that has taken the form of the 28-nation-strong Global Alliance of Genomics and Health — was needed to gather immense data on the disease-causing genes.

This is a natural progression of the Human Genome Project, which on its completion in 2003, provided a sequence of letters that make up the human DNA. However, to analyse this set of letters and to pinpoint “problematic” genes, a large pool of genetic data needed to be collected from patients across the globe. The U.K., the U.S. and Estonia have already started this process by asking patients to volunteer genetic samples.

India’s role

“India, with its diversity of groups, environment and high rates of consanguinity, will play a critical role in the alliance. It is my hope that research here will pick on this,” said Dr. Lander, who is also the founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University.

Addressing a packed auditorium at Indian Institute of Science, the geneticist punctuated his intriguing talk with humour and layered the interaction to suit the varied backgrounds of those assembled: from high school students to molecular biologists and geneticists.

Interaction with scientists and researches focused on precision medicine — the technique of attacking particular genes that cause diseases such as cancer — as well as the methodologies used for his research.

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