Genomics is the science of genomes: it is the study of all the genetic material of an organism. In humans, the genome consists of information carried in 23 pairs of chromosomes in the nucleus, as well as mitochondrial DNA. In genomics, both coding and non-coding DNA is sequenced and analyzed. Genomics allows a better understanding of all living things, their evolution, and their diversity. It has a myriad of uses: for example, to build phylogenetic trees, to improve productivity and...

The first human genome sequencing project cost $2.7 billion and was declared complete in 2003, after 15 years of international cooperation and collaboration between several research teams and funding agencies. Today, with the advent of next-generation sequencing technologies, the cost and time of sequencing a human genome have dropped over 100 fold.
Next-Generation Sequencing Methods
Although all next-generation methods use different technologies, they all share a set of standard features....

Genome-wide association studies or GWAS are used to identify whether common SNPs are associated with certain diseases. Suppose specific SNPs are more frequently observed in individuals with a particular disease than those without the disease. In that case, those SNPs are said to be associated with the disease. Chi-square analysis is performed to check the probability of the allele likely to be associated with the disease.
GWAS does not require the identification of the target gene involved in...

DNA sequencing is a fundamental technique that is routinely used in the biological sciences. This method can be applied to a range of questions at different scales - from the sequencing of a cloned DNA fragment or the study of a mutation in a gene up to whole-genome sequencing. However, despite the widespread use of sequencing today, it was not until 1977 that Fredrick Sanger and his collaborators developed the chain-termination method to decode DNA sequences. It relies on the separation of a...

Base complementarity between the three base pairs of mRNA codon and the tRNA anticodon is not a failsafe mechanism. Inaccuracies can range from a single mismatch to no correct base pairing at all. The free energy difference between the correct and nearly correct base pairs can be as small as 3 kcal/ mol. With complementarity being the only proofreading step, the estimated error frequency would be one wrong amino acid in every 100 amino acids incorporated. However, error frequencies observed in...

Diploid organisms inherit genetic material through chromosomes from both parents. Copies of the same gene are known as alleles. In most cases, both alleles are simultaneously expressed and allow various cellular processes to function optimally. If one of the alleles is missing or mutated, the expression of the other allele can compensate; however, this is not true for all genes.
The expression of some genes depends on which parent passed the gene to the offspring, through a phenomenon known as...