The Amazing Double Helix: Image courtesy the National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH.Scientists analyzing DNA from the blood of 17,000 people to find genetic differences have found new genetic variants for such common ailments as Crohn’s disease, coronary heart disease, hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, depression, and type 1 and 2 diabetes.

The findings, done under the auspices of the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium study (WTCCC), a British organization, have been hailed as a new chapter in medical science supplying more new knowledge in the past 12 months than scientists have learned in the last 15 years.

"If you think of the genome as very long road that you are trying to find your way along in the dark, previously we have only been able to turn lights on in a small number of places, but now we can turn on lights in a large number of places - in this case half a million lights”, he said.

The findings, which were published recently in Nature, located a previously unknown gene common to Crohn's disease and type 1 diabetes, suggesting that they share similar biological pathways.

This hits home with my family since my youngest son suffers from Crohn’s disease , and one of my younger brothers has a son who developed Type 1 diabetes at age thirteen. And there’s also depression in our family. So it seems perhaps this means there’s a glitch somewhere in the family genome.

A team of 200 scientists studied hundreds of thousands of DNA markers by scanning “gene chips” to identify genetic differences across the whole genome. Surprisingly, they found that many of the genes identified were in areas of the genome not previously connected with disease.

What this all means is that people may be able to find out early on what sort of health issues to expect during their lifetimes.

"Our study should enable scientists to understand better how disease occurs, which people are most at risk and, in time, to produce more effective, more personalized treatments", professor Donnelly said.

It also means that hopefully even cures for some of the more serious diseases that plague mankind will eventually be found.

FURTHER INFO

Wellcome Study on BioTech Weblog
BBC website story

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