GoI clears Genome India Project

The Department of Biotechnology operating under Ministry of Science and Technology has cleared Genome India Project. More than 20 leading institutions including IISc Bengaluru are to participate in the project.

Highlights

The project will at its first phase take samples of 10,000 persons to develop a reference Genome. The Centre of Brain Research operating under IISc will act as a nodal point of the project. The Project was inspired by Human Genome Project.

Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project was launched in 1990 and ended in 2003. It was an international project funded by the US Government.

The project aimed to map human genome and assemble them together to obtain a complete sequence of chromosomes. It mapped the nucleotides in the genome.

What is Genome?

Genome is the sequence of DNA. It contains all the hereditary information of an individual. Genome is not the same as gene or DNA. Genes are made of DNA. The Genome is simply sum of all DNAs of an individual.

Month: Current Affairs - March, 2020