Preliminary genomic analysis of 10,000 Indians expected to kick-start precision medicine in India

THE Genomelndia Project data set as reference for genetics and genomics would help improve how disease is diagnosed, predict one's response to a drug and kick-start precision medicine efforts in India, according to a research article.

- KRISHNA

Launched in 2020 by the Department of Biotechnology, Genomelndia aims to build a database to capture the genetic diversity of India's population.

In the first phase, genomes of 10,000 individuals were sequenced, data of which was published in January this year for future research.

Writing in a comment, published in the journal Nature Genetics, researchers from over 20 institutes, including those of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, have published preliminary findings of the genome sequencing.

Kumaraamy Thangaraj, CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow at the CSIRCentre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, told PTI, "the comment was written to promote to the scientific community that India has completed the whole genome sequencing of 10,000 individuals. We have carefully selected the 83 population groups across India representing different linguistic groups and geographical regions."

The team looked at four major linguistic groups of Indo-European, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman within a broad geographic region, population belonging to distinct bio-geographies were sampled.