Your health within the hands of genetics and genomics

Although the terms genetics and genomics are used interchangeably, it will be important to keep in mind that they don’t mean the identical thing. Let’s have a look at the definitions of those terms, have a look at their differences, and understand the meaning behind the science.

Definitions

According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2019):

• is the science that deals with heredity.
• is defined because the study of genes and their functions and the techniques related to this study.

Examples of genetic or inherited diseases include cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease, sickle cell disease, von Willebrand disease, and phenylketonuria (PKU). Genomics refers back to the scientific study of complex diseases similar to heart disease, asthma, diabetes, and cancer. These diseases are often brought on by a mixture of genetic and environmental aspects, reasonably than by single genes. Genomics offers latest promise for the treatment and cure of some complex diseases, in addition to latest diagnostic methods.
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While genetics is the detailed study of the function and configuration of a single gene, genomics examines all genes and their interrelationships with the goal of determining their combined effect on an organism’s growth and development.

A Closer Look (The Jackson Library, 2019; NIH, 2018; NIH, 2019)

In genetics, we study how certain characteristics or conditions are passed from generation to generation via deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). You may remember out of your school days that genetics dates back to the scientist and Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel, who studied heredity in pea plants within the mid-Nineteenth century. A gene is a unit of DNA situated on a chromosome that determines your characteristics. Your genes direct how your body develops, causes disease, and responds to medications.
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DNA is stored as a code made up of 4 chemical bases, including adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). Human DNA has about 3 billion bases, and over 99% of the bases are the identical in all humans! It’s essential to keep in mind that the order of the bases affects the knowledge available to construct and maintain the organism. DNA bases pair up, and every pair is attached to a sugar molecule and a phosphate molecule. This entire “package” known as a nucleotide. The nucleotides are put together into two long strands that form a spiral called a double helix (which looks like a ladder). DNA replicates itself, or makes copies of itself. Each strand of DNA is usually a template for duplicating the sequence of bases.
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Genomics was first described by scientist Dr. Tom Roderick in Jackson’s Maine lab in 1986 and encompasses sequencing, mapping, and latest technologies in the sphere of genetics. Genomics is the study of an organism’s entire genes, also often called the genome. Scientists examine vast amounts of DNA sequence data (3 billion DNA units in 23,000 genes) to search out differences that cause disease or trigger responses to treatment.

How essential is that? (NIH, 2018)

Genomics helps us understand why some people get sick from certain infections, environmental aspects, and behaviors, while others don’t. An example of it is a one that exercises frequently, eats a healthy weight loss plan, and gets regular checkups but dies of a heart attack at age forty. Another example is a one that smokes cigarettes all his life but lives into his nineties. Interestingly, genomic aspects play a task in nine of the ten leading causes of death within the United States. Amazingly, everybody is 99.9% an identical genetically, and 0.1% have clues to the causes of disease (Rosenberg et al., 2002).
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In general, genetics and genomics play a major role in our overall health and disease development. If you will have ever used genetic testing services (e.g., 23andme, AncestryDNA®), you understand that they’ll enable you to learn more about inherited diseases, screening, testing, and treatment.
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Genomics can assist us improve our health and help us understand what we are able to do to stop certain diseases. Because our health is formed by our family history and environmental influences, understanding these aspects can assist us recognize disease aspects that even have a genetic component.
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National Institutes of Health (NIH) Genetics Health Reference
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Center for Genetic and Rare Diseases

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National Institutes of Health (NIH). (2018). Genetics vs. Genomics Fact Sheet. Downloaded from https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Genetics-vs-Genomics

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National Institutes of Health (NIH). (2019). What is DNA? Retrieved from https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/basics/dna

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Rosenberg, N., Pritchard, K., Weber, J., Cann, H., Kidd, K., Zhivotovsky, L., Feldman, M. (2002). Genetic structure of human populations. (5602). doi: 10.1126/science.1078311
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The Jackson Library. (2019). Genetics vs. Genomics. Retrieved from https://www.jax.org/personalized-medicine/precision-medicine-and-you/genetics-vs-genomics

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World Health Organization (WHO). (2019). Human Genomics in Global Health. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/genomics/geneticsVSgenomics/en/

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