Union Jitendra Singh said that many Indians are intermarried.
New Delhi:
Scientists on Tuesday announced that they have sequenced the genomes of 10,000 Indians from different communities to create a database that could lead to gene-based treatments, with Union Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh calling it a significant milestone for science in India. The moment has been told.
Addressing a function in the national capital, Mr Singh said genome study or sequencing is going to determine future health care strategies both therapeutically and prophylactically across the world.
He said that there is a strong need to find Indian solutions to Indian problems as the country is emerging as a leading nation among scientifically advanced countries.
Shri Singh complimented the Department of Biotechnology for the ambitious goal of identifying and cataloging the genetic variations of the diverse Indian population by sequencing the entire genome of 10,000 healthy individuals from 99 communities representing all major linguistic and social groups across the country. of.
The Indian population of 1.3 billion includes more than 4,600 population groups and many of them are endogamous, he said.
“These factors have contributed to the genetic diversity of the current population. Thus, there is individual diversity within the Indian population and, often, many disease-causing mutations are increased within some of these groups. Therefore, population-based Or disease-based findings from human genetics research from other populations of the world cannot be extended to Indians,” Mr Singh said.
Creating a database of the Indian genome means researchers anywhere can learn about genetic variants that are unique to India’s population groups and use it to optimize drugs and treatments.
The UK, China and the US are among the countries that have programs to sequence at least 1,00,000 genomes.
Professor Y Narahari and Dr K Thangaraj, joint coordinators of GenomeIndia, said that beyond the massive scale of sequencing and establishing reference genomes, the creation of a biobank containing 20,000 blood samples at the Brain Research Centre, coupled with data collection in the Indian National Institutes of Health, has been undertaken. The Biological Data Center exemplifies the project’s commitment to transparency, collaboration, and future research efforts.
The data is being stored at the Indian Biological Data Center established by the Department of Biotechnology of the Central Government at the Regional Biotechnology Centre, Faridabad.
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