The power of the genome: Medical and technological advances in the atomic era
Medicine is a field that has been constantly evolving from its beginnings and advancing in synergy with technological development and innovation. With new inventions come questions of how this can benefit people, and what better benefit to ensure their health. Today we are in the atomic age, we can see and analyze things smaller than ever and in people that means the analysis of genetic material. These are the instructions of life and death, each person has specific instructions on how to give his life almost since he was born, the exceptions of certain epigenetic issues. But therefore your study is so important, because if the genome is understood the functioning, or the failure, of the human body. With the tools today, it is possible to detect diseases since before birth, in addition to finding solutions to diseases that in the past were a safe death sentence. And the study of the genome is not in the human being, but the study of the genetics of all living beings, which allowed us to develop and find solutions to multiple problems, and since we understand something then has the possibility, not only to use it, but to manipulate it.
The revolution of genetic therapy and personalized medicine: Improving health through the knowledge of the human genome
So the understanding of the human genome allows the diagnosis of diseases with great precision, but what is genetic therapy has also become essential in the health of today. And when we talk about genetic therapy, we often think about very complex things, such as genetic manipulation, replacement of genes or things by style, but since RNA vaccines, one can say that already all people, or at least those who received these vaccines, are genetically modified. This is because we are introducing very specific parts of the viral genome within our bodies, no one is being modified and no one is making it mutant, but since this simple action, we are already seeing how the knowledge of DNA and RNA, not only of the human, but of the living beings, and what are the viruses, allows us to exponentially improve the way we approach health problems. And little by little the term “custom medicine” begins to emerge. This concept has long arisen from the design of the human genome, since if we get to know in its entirety the genome and know perfectly what to do every thing, encoder or not, we could do extremely accurate and designed treatments for each person. Not only in topics of genetic disorders, but rather know how the body of each person reacts to certain things, or what kind of support offer the body to maximize the efficiency of treatments. Here molecular techniques play an extremely important role, because they are precisely the tools that allow us to know and accurately determine the genetic behavior of each person in the face of certain stimuli. What microarreglos or RT-PCRs allow us to quickly observe how the body reacts at a molecular level, and its development is basic to continue with the way to a world of personalized treatments.
Departing from the usefulness of genetic study in humans, genetic engineering has made revolutionary leaps thanks to the understanding we have of the genome in other organisms, especially in microorganisms. The production of biological products in bacteria has been something that genuinely changed the panorama altogether, not only in the area of health, but also in agriculture, industry, food and many others. Recombinant proteins, for example, are one of the most important innovations of the last century, exponentially improving treatments such as diabetes, where the extraction of pork insulin was significantly effective, expensive and complex to obtain, using bacteria Escherichia coliThe best friend of biotechnology. This bacterium was modified for the production of human insulin, which allowed exponentially to reduce costs, as well as increase its efficiency in treatment. But this is not the only, bacteria have become a huge source of multiple recombinant proteins that fulfill the function of treatment, diagnosis and research. And although bacteria are the main ones involved in this type of production, there are today yeasts, fungi, and even plants that have been modified to continue to develop this field of recombinant proteins. The tobacco plant, a crop that has more than studied and standardized around the world, is one of the best plants to modify and convert into a producer of recombinant proteins; following insulin, it seems to be that it can now be produced in lechuga, something that would truly be revolutionary in the fight against diabetes.
In short, the study of genomics, proteomics, epigenetics and more than nothing the omic sciences is something that is really worth. They increasingly have more and better procedures that cover much than health treats all the time. Understanding at a molecular level DNA, RNA and also proteins and other metabolites, represents knowing the building blocks of life itself, and as I mentioned earlier, when you know something detailed, can change and improve. And it is not necessarily a matter of raising eugenetics to a divine or perfect state, but if it is to help the world to reach new limits and to get rid of the problems that plague the world, for as long as more research is done in these fields, it will be easier to bring this science to all people, after all and at the end we are all practically equal, we are all formed of it, so we should all have the ability to understand and take advantage of what unites us.
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