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Wednesday, 30 November 2011

Much more than a single Personal Genome

With sequencing costs rapidly falling down, the era of personal genomics seems at hand. Soon we can analyze the entire genome of an individual for a bunch of dollars and know everything about its genetic predispositions...But someone says it's no time for easy celebrations, since che scenario is far more complex than usually believed: in his recent post John Rennie at Smart Plant's Savvy Scientist, underlines that actually we have more than one personal genomes and we have to take all these ones in to account in the future. An intriguing example is the fact that specific genomic rearrangements occur frequently in single neuronal cells in mammals, increasing the complexity, flexibility and responsivness of neuron networks and they may play a role in various psichiatric and neurodegenrative disorders. Togheter with other already known phenomenon such as mosaicism and chimerism and the increasing relevance given to mictobiome in human biology and pathology, it really makes no sense to talk about a single Personal Genome...We are dealing with a GROUP of Personal Genomes...Lets sequence them all!

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