The Future of the Human Genome

February 10, 2011 | Source: Technology Review

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) has developed a new vision, published today (Feb. 10) in the journal Nature, for exploring the human genome.

According to Eric Green, NHGRI’s director:

  • Over the next 10 years we will start to see spectacular advances in our understanding of how the genome works, how disease works, and how genomic changes are associated with disease. But truly changing medicine will take more than 10 years.
  • The biggest challenge is in data analysis. We can generate large amounts of data very inexpensively, but that overwhelms our capacity to understand it or make it available to physicians.
  • We also need to start thinking about how to train people, both health-care professionals and scientists, to be facile in bioinformatics.