Easy Science: "Genome complexity and medicine: illness prediction gets complicated"
Easy Science: "Genome complexity and medicine: illness prediction gets complicated"
Easy Science Conference: "Genome complexity and medicine: illness prediction gets complicated"
The study of the genome through sequencing produces an enormous quantity of data. This data is analysed by bioinformatics researchers dedicated to the management and analysis of all of the information obtained when a genome is sequenced via, for example, mathematical, biological, computer and statistical tools.
Personalised medicine is based on the premise that if a disease is caused by a mutation of a patient’s genome, this mutation will always produce the same effect in another person: the effect is stable and constant, independently of whom the individual might be. However, recent research suggests that this effect may depend on the combination with other mutations. In some cases, it can be demonstrated that two “bad” mutations could combine to produce a perfectly healthy person, meaning that in the world of genetics, two “negatives” sometimes make a “positive”.
It is also likely that some mutations which cause disease may be benign if combined with other genetic changes, although this phenomenon has not yet been observed in humans. This is discouraging for personalised medicine, as the study of mutation interaction is, both in theory and practice, much more complex than the study of a single mutation.
Fyodor Kondrashov is the leader of the research group into evolutionary genomics at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG). In this talk he will discuss the work that his lab does and the role of bioinformatics in the study of disease-causing mutations in humans.
Speaker: Fyodor Kondrashov, ICREA Research Professor and leader of the group Evolutionary Genomics at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG).
Date: 23rd November 2011
Time: 19.00 h
Venue: Auditori, Centre de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona (CCCB). Montalegre, 5, Barcelona.
Room capacity: 190 people. The talk would be in English (simultaneous translation available).
For further information: comunicacio@crg.eu
