Another huge part of medicine is expected to involve genes sequencing, or in other words: genetic screening. Originally, it cost several million dollars to sequence all the genes in a single human body. Today, because of improved technologies, it would cost $50,000. But in the future Moore’s law going to drive down the price of genetic scanning and make it possible even for an average person to get their full “gene portfolio”. In within 10 years scientist expecting the price of it be a $1,000. Which means that one day everyone might have a CD or chip with his or her genes described on it. It would open an entirely new branch of medicine, called bioinformatics, or using a computers to rapidly scan and analyze the genome of thousands of organisms. …show more content…
In the future, gene therapy may be able to cure many of the 5,000 known genetic diseases. There are two types of gene therapy: somatic and germ line. Somatic gene therapy involves fixing the broken genes of a single individual and germ-line gene therapy fixes the genes of the sex cells, so that the repaired gene can be passed on to the next generation. The process of curing genetic diseases has two main steps. First is analyzing the genes of the individual and tracing family tree, going back many generation, in order to find the precise location of the gene that may be damaged. Second: taking the healthy version of the gene, inserted into harmless virus, and then injection it into the patient. The virus quickly inserts the “good gene” into the cells, potentially curing the disease. So far the progress in the field of genetic medicine has been slow and the results mixed. There are some problems, that scientist are looking forward to solve in the near future. One of them is: the body often confuses injected harmless virus, containing the “good gene” with a dangerous virus and begins to attack it. Despite it, Michio Kaku has a positive prediction that “by midcentury, gene therapy will be a standard method of treating a variety of genetic diseases”