The importance of human genetics as a subject of vital importance for the progress and betterment of mankind was stressed at a workshop on bioinformatics jointly organised by Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT) and Comstech here on Thursday.
This will bring immense benefit to mankind and will enable treatments tailored to the individual and improve our standing of previously untreatable diseases such as kidney disorders, diabetes, heart diseases and cancer. The impact of this technology will be felt not only in medicine but also in plant sciences and agriculture.
The workshop was aimed to introduce and train researchers and clinicians from Pakistan as well as from Islamic world in the field of life sciences as to how to use web based bioinformatics tools and resources in order to analyse the enormous amount of genetic data produced by high throughput of DNA sequences.
Dr Qasim Ayub and Luca Pagani globally renowned scientists for their contributions to the genetic analysis on human populations at the famous Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge shire, United Kingdom, supervised the deliberations of the workshop.
Characterizing genetic modifications that have enabled modern humans to adapt to their changing environment like those whose ancestors moved out of Africa, greatly help in understanding of the origin and migrations of human populations. This is of particular relevance for Pakistan because it has been at the cross roads of human migrations for thousands of years, the workshop audience was informed.
Dr Qasim Mehdi of SIUT, a leading scientist of the field was the main co-ordinator of the workshop briefed the participants that he introduced the subject in Pakistan some two decades ago. He disclosed the tremendous achievements in this field specially with the completion of International Human Genome Project having been achieved.
He further said that this is an opportune time for conducting such a workshop as thousands of human genomes, including hundreds of Pakistani individuals, are being completely sequenced by an international team of collaborators involved in the "1000 Genomes Project" at the Sanger Institute. The ongoing genetic revolution is poised to improve the traditional medical practice. The paradigm is changing from "diagnose and treat" to "predict and prevent," he said. Dr Anwar Naqvi welcomed the participants on behalf of SIUT.