GENETICS

Human Genome Project and Personalized Medicine

[Name of the Institution

Human Genome Project and Personalized Medicine

Introduction

In the fields of molecular genetics profiling, genomics, genetics, and biotechnology, a rapid pace progress has been seen, that may possibly soon become an integral tool for the clinicians to guide the individualized management for a tons of medical situations (Mancinelli, Cronin, Sadee , 2000, pp. 4). The Personalized medicine is also termed as precision medicine, genomic medicine, and personalized genomics that refers to the patient-specific profile applications incorporating into the genomic and genetic data along with the environmental and clinical aspects for assessing the individual risk which tailors the disease management and perception strategies(Mancinelli, Cronin, Sadee , 2000, pp. 4).

The Pharmacogenomics is mainly a study of the acquired and inherited genetic variation role on the responses of drugs (Wang et al, 2011, pp. 11). It is chiefly distinguished from the term pharmacogenetics mainly focusing on the individual candidate genes that mainly identifies the approaches for instance methylation studies, genome-wide expression profiling, and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for identifying the markers across the genome which mainly affects the metabolism of the drugs, it biological effects, receptor targets, and distribution (Wang et al, 2011, pp. 11). On the other hand, these two terms that is used interchangeably.

In theory, the genetic aspect identification mainly influences the metabolism of the drug absorption and the receptor level action which shall permit for an individualize therapy, hence it can assist in optimizing the efficacy of the drugs and also diminish the profile toxicity in a certain population (Leufkens, 2000, pp. 121; Wang, 2011, pp. 11; Mancinelli et al., 2000, pp. 4). For the personalized medicines the advocates cite one of a potential for yielding a significant economic and health advantages:

Delivery of suitable therapies

Reduced healthcare costs

Disease prevention strategies being optimized

Reduced incidence of treatment-related complications

medical decision making being improved

Skeptics usually argue that there is limited number of examples where a certain genetic test or biomarker assists in guiding the medical decision making and therefore a bit more wide spread profiling remains to be highly unrealistic (Li, 2011, pp. 403). For supporting this view point the aspects cited to support includes the lack of apparent therapeutic alternatives, the high testing cost, for many situations a lack of reliable predictive biomarkers, which is based on the genetic differences for a variety of conditions, and lack of expertise and knowledge among a lot of clinicians regarding to the genetic counseling, risk prediction, and genetics (Li., 2011, pp. 403; Vogenberg, Barash, Purse, 2010, pp. 670).

Human Genes

Genetics is a transmission of traits from ancestor to offspring. The gene in human is unit carrying genetic information that codes for a single biological product or function. These genes are found on the chromosomes and they are composed of DNA (nucleic acid) and proteins (Strachan, & Read, 2010). “A gene is a union of genomic sequences encoding a coherent set of potentially overlapping functional products”. (Gerstein et al, 2007, pp. 669) Genes can be the conventional factor of the description of most ...