Thoughts on Genomics

1) Define Genomics your own way after doing research on what genomes are and how we study.

Genomics is a study of a genome. While genome is a complete set of genes of an organism, including all modifications that structures responsible for gene maintenance can harbor 

-Genomics is changing the paradigm of biology

Indeed the way that NGS enabled scientist to approach the biological phenomena is magnificent. The breakthrough happened just 15-20  years ago, at the fruits of it are still to come. Cancer, aging , neurodegenerative diseases, stem cell research and particularly all other researches in the biological field are taking benefits from this breakthrough. And yes it can be said that paradigm has shifted. 

 

2) What is the origin of genomics?

Origin of genomics for me lies in the mid of 20th century when Watson and Crick found the structure of  DNA. I think that from that point it was getting clear that the information that passes through generations is actually DNA. 

 

3) History of genomics?

Watson/ Crick> 3D Proteins > Cloning, Recombination > Amplification Technologies > Human Reference Genome > Next Gen. Sequencing/Personal Genomics > Genome Engineering - >  Synthetic Biology

 

4) The future of genomics?

-The future genomic technologies allow clinicians and biomedical researchers to drastically increase the amount of genomic data collected on large study populations.

However, increasing the number of data from the population may not solve all the problems  due to heterogeneity that some diseases harbor. Thus single cell sequencing is another branch that should and will have major breakthroughs  that will help us understand genomes better. 

 

5) What is the relationship with other omics?

The omics studies are mainly focused on data analysis, thus the tools and logic used in these studies may be interchanged. 

 

6) How can we engineer genomes?

Synthetic biology is the field that progressing and aiming on this particular question. Creating a genome from scratch seems incredible, however for me it is still the data the information that genomes have is more important rather than the place, whether it is a tube or cell where the information was created.