Question

‘Comparative genomics can enable better understanding of genome function.’ Discuss this statement using case studies, highlighting the relevance of comparative genomics studies to human medicine. Describe what genome is and detail the phylogenetic methods and concepts utilized in comparative genomics.

Answer 1

COMPARATIVE GENOMICS

                   Comparative genomics is a field of biological research in which the genomic features of different organisms are compared. The genomic features includes DNA sequences, genes, gene order and other genomic structures. In this branch of genomics , whole or large part of genomes resulting from genome products are compared to study basic biological similarities and differences as well as evolutionary relationships between organisms. The major principles of comparative genomics is that common features of two organisms will often be encoded within DNA that is evolutionary conserved between them. Therefore comparative genomic approaches starts with making some form of alignment of genome sequences and looking for orthologous sequences( sequences having common ancestry) in the aligned genomes and checking to what extent those sequences are conserved . Hence, based on these genome and molecular evolution are inferred and this may in turn to put in context of like, phenotypic evolution or population genetics.

                                        Comparative genomics has revealed high levels of similarity between closely related organisms , such as humans and chimpanzees , and also similarities between distantly related organisms such as humans and the yeast . It has also showed the extreme diversity of the gene composition in different evolutions. Comparitive genomics method have allowed researchers to gather information on gene variation, gene expression, and so on.

          Studies based on comparative genomics are such like

• The Great ape genome project used comparative genomics methods to investigate gene variation with reference to the six great ape species finding healthy levels of variation in their gene pool despite shrinking population size.

                               The application of comparative genomics are much effective in field of human medicines, Some examples are

• Vaccinology in particular has experienced useful advantages in technology due to genome approach to problems.
• Through reverse vaccinology , researchers can discover the candidate antigens for vaccine development by analyzing the genome of pathogens or it's family.

                                  

                                     

                     Genome is the genetic material of an organism in terms of genetics . It consists of DNA ( or RNA ) including both coding and non-coding genes as well as mitochondrial and chloroplast DNA .The study of genome is called genomics. A genome sequence is a complete sets of nucleotides (A,T,G,C) that make up all chromosomes of an induviual or species.