Woman's DNA unravelled

2008-05-27 07:16

Amsterdam - Dutch scientists said on Monday they had completed the first sequencing of an individual woman's DNA.

The researchers at Leiden University Medical Centre said they had sequenced the entire genome of one of their female researchers, though no other scientists had yet verified their data.

The first sequencing of a composite human genome was announced in 2001. At least four individual male genomes and those of about a dozen animals had so far been sequenced.

"The more data that is made public, the more chances we have of making sense of the similarities and differences between them and to understand the patterns of how genes work together," said Stephen Scherer, a genetics expert at the Hospital for Sick Children at the University of Toronto. Scherer was not connected to the Dutch research.

Comparative sequences important

Scherer said that it was important to have comparative genome sequences from women. In the next few years, he predicted, thousands of genomes would be sequenced.

"I think the tipping point when we start to understand how this works will come really fast," he said. "It will absolutely make a difference to how diseases are prevented or treated."

The full complement of an organism's DNA was called its genome. In animals and people, it is made up of nearly 3 billion building blocks.

The sequence of those blocks spelled out the hereditary information, just as strings of letters spelled out sentences. Decoding a genome, which was called sequencing, meant identifying the order of the building blocks.

While scientists made great advances recently in identifying genes for certain diseases such as cancer, for the most part, those were not yet translated into cures or treatments.

- AP