Genetics: Easy as ABC

Imagine if we lived in a world where scientists could make drugs specifically tailored to your individual needs. Well, what was once only seen in sci-fi films, is now a reality. Pharmacogenomics combines pharmacology: the study of drugs, with genomics: the study of a people’s genes. This revolutionary new branch of science has the potential to develop drugs, specially tailored to an individual’s genetics; this would avoid negative side effects and perfect the dosage required for optimum effect. Pharmacogenomic s is a vital new field, less than 20 years old. Current drugs are based on a ‘one size fits all’ basis, but this does not necessarily mean they will work the same way for everyone. A person’s genetics may be the root cause of this difference, although other factors like gender, age, and lifestyle will all play their part. Professor Munir Pirmohamed said that most prescribed drugs only work in 30-50% of people. Furthermore, statistics show that 6.5% of hospital admissions in the...

In the wake of the Human Genome Project, which completed the sequencing of the entire human genome in 2003, the British Prime Minister in 2012 (David Cameron) announced the launch of the 100,000 Genome Project. This project took the Human Genome Project a step further, with the aim to sequence 100,000 genomes of patients with cancer and rare diseases. The project looked specifically at how the individuals’ genomes contribute to the development of disease, whilst also providing information which could improve disease diagnosis and personalised treatment. The project completed in 2018, and the findings were both vital and ground-breaking. To give some clarity on the hierarchy of what makes us, us, think about the image that we see when we talk about DNA: the spiralling ladder. Each of the ‘steps’ of the ladder are called bases and there are four different bases in DNA: Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Guanine (G) and Cytosine (C). In total, there are around 3 billion bases in a person’s genom...

The age-old debate: are you the way you are because of your genes or your environment? In the nature versus nurture debate, nature refers to all your genetic and hereditary factors, whereas nurture refers to all the environmental factors, including childhood experiences and relationships, the way a person was raised, and their culture. But which of these plays the most important role in making someone the way they are? It is widely accepted that both nature and nurture play a role in a person’s behaviour, traits, characteristics, and personality, but it is frequently debated as to whether they have a 50:50 impact or whether one has more sway over the other. The Centre for Education and Youth have a very clever way of responding to this question. They begin by asking ‘how do you work out the area of a rectangle?’. As we all know, we’d work out the area of a rectangle by multiplying its length by its width; then they go on to ask, ‘what’s more important for calculating the area of a re...