Life has remained an eternal and esoteric mystery even till today. Even though we find it inside and all around us, we do not know what it exactly is. The answer to this mystery lies in our DNA and Genomics. Once we know what it actually is, the possibilities are endless: creating artificial life, artificial evolution, etc. However, the most beautiful possibility is that we can extend our own life. Humans being die at an average age of 82.6 years[http://www.disabled-world.com/calculators-charts/life-expectancy-statistics.php] mostly due to diseases.[http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/index2.html] Imagine if we remove he word disease from the dictionary. Yes, it is possible, due to the Genomics. Genomics is that part of genetics …show more content…
Although when it comes to medicine, it can be defined as ‘one size fits all’ approach to medicine. But to the advancements in science and technology, the world of medicine has changed a lot. The concept of Personalized Medicine has come into the scene. Now what exactly does personalized medicine mean? Well it is exactly the same thing as a custom made shirt! It is a medicine that will best suit you with the least possible side effects. The medicines that already exist work on mere statistical averages and may or may not work for a specific person. For example, if a medicine ‘X’ has an effectiveness rate of 50 %, it will only work for every alternate person that takes …show more content…
A genuine genome sample of the patient needs to obtained and analyzed. Obtaining this genome sequence is not difficult due to the modernization of technology. The body fluid sample of the patient (such as blood or saliva) is sent to a laboratory for investigation where the DNA is extracted and sequenced. Then through computerized means, the nucleotides of the genome are visually reassembled on the screen for easier comprehension. Although the sequencing cost is still expensive, it is falling exponentially and will soon be readily available to the common man. The previous sequencing methods took a very long time to complete and a lot of money (to be concise, the Human Genome Project took 10 years to complete and around 3 billion dollars), while now it only takes around a week and about 10,000 dollars to sequence a human genome. The predicted sequencing resources in the future are as low as 1,000 dollars in only a couple of hours. Faster sequencing will benefit the scientists as they will be able to look for the genetic variations effortlessly. Personal medicine has many advantages such as: • Personal medicine has a lot of potential in the future and will easily outperform the current method of curing diseases. • Predict susceptibility to disease, improve disease detection, preempt disease