Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dimensional structural configuration. In contrast to genetics, which refers to the study of individual genes and their roles in inheritance, genomics aims at the collective characterization and quantification of all of an organism's genes, their interrelations and influence on the organism. Genes may direct the production of proteins with the assistance of enzymes and messenger molecules. In turn, proteins make up body structures such as organs and tissues as well as control chemical reactions and carry signals between cells. Genomics also involves the sequencing and analysis of genomes through uses of high throughput DNA sequencing and bioinformatics to assemble and analyze the function and structure of entire genomes. Advances in genomics have triggered a revolution in discovery-based research and systems biology to facilitate understanding of even the most complex biological systems such as the brain.
A DNA sequencer is a scientific instrument used to automate the DNA sequencing process. Given a sample of DNA, a DNA sequencer is used to determine the order of the four bases: G (guanine), C (cytosine), A (adenine) and T (thymine). This is then reported as a text string, called a read. Some DNA sequencers can be also considered optical instruments as they analyze light signals originating from fluorochromes attached to nucleotides.
Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the field also has foundations in applied mathematics, chemistry, and genetics. It differs from biological computing, a subfield of computer engineering which uses bioengineering to build computers.
Agilent Technologies, Inc. is an American company with global headquarters is located in Santa Clara, California. Agilent was established in 1999 as a spin-off from Hewlett-Packard. The resulting IPO of Agilent stock was the largest in the history of Silicon Valley at the time.
Affymetrix is now Applied Biosystems, a brand of DNA microarray products sold by Thermo Fisher Scientific that originated with an American biotechnology research and development and manufacturing company of the same name. The Santa Clara, California-based Affymetrix, Inc. now a part of Thermo Fisher Scientific was co-founded by Alex Zaffaroni and Stephen Fodor. Stephen Fodor and his group, based on their earlier development of methods to fabricate DNA microarrays using semiconductor manufacturing techniques.
DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. The advent of rapid DNA sequencing methods has greatly accelerated biological and medical research and discovery.
AFLP-PCR or just AFLP is a PCR-based tool used in genetics research, DNA fingerprinting, and in the practice of genetic engineering. Developed in the early 1990s by KeyGene, AFLP uses restriction enzymes to digest genomic DNA, followed by ligation of adaptors to the sticky ends of the restriction fragments. A subset of the restriction fragments is then selected to be amplified. This selection is achieved by using primers complementary to the adaptor sequence, the restriction site sequence and a few nucleotides inside the restriction site fragments. The amplified fragments are separated and visualized on denaturing on agarose gel electrophoresis, either through autoradiography or fluorescence methodologies, or via automated capillary sequencing instruments.
George McDonald Church is an American geneticist, molecular engineer, chemist, and a serial entrepreneur who is widely regarded as the "Founding Father of Genomics", and a pioneer in personal genomics and synthetic biology. He is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard. Through his Harvard lab Church has co-founded around 50 biotech companies pushing the boundaries of innovation in the world of life sciences and making his lab as the hotbed of biotech startup activity in Boston. In 2018, the Church lab at Harvard made a record by spinning off 16 biotech companies in one year. The Church lab works on research projects that are distributed in diverse areas of modern biology like developmental biology, neurobiology, info processing, medical genetics, genomics, gene therapy, diagnostics, chemistry & bioengineering, space biology & space genetics, and ecosystem. Research and technology developments at the Church lab have impacted or made direct contributions to nearly all "next-generation sequencing (NGS)" methods and companies. In 2017, Time magazine listed him in Time 100, the list of 100 most influential people in the world. In 2022, he was featured among the most influential people in biopharma by Fierce Pharma, and was listed among the top 8 famous geneticists of all time in human history. As of January 2023, Church serves as a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Board of Sponsors, established by Albert Einstein.
Sonata Software Limited is an Indian information technology services company, based in Bangalore. Sonata provides services in business intelligence and analytics, application development management (ADM), mobility, cloud, social media, testing, enterprise services, and infrastructure management services.
The Centre for Applied Genomics is a genome centre in the Research Institute of The Hospital for Sick Children, and is affiliated with the University of Toronto. TCAG also operates as a Science and Technology Innovation Centre of Genome Canada, with an emphasis on next-generation sequencing (NGS) and bioinformatics support. Research at TCAG focuses on the genetic and genomic basis of human variability, health and disease, including research on the genetics of autism spectrum disorder and structural variation of the human genome. The centre is located in the Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning in downtown Toronto, Canada.
Gajendra Pal Singh Raghava is an Indian bio-informatician and head of computational biology at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology.
Nuvelo Inc. was a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery, development and commercialization of drugs for acute cardiovascular disease, cancer and other debilitating medical conditions. On January 27, 2009, the company was acquired by ARCA Biopharma, Inc. in a reverse takeover transaction.
Qlucore is a swedish Bioinformatics software company founded in early 2007. It started as a collaborative research project at Lund University, Sweden, supported by researchers at the Departments of Mathematics and Clinical Genetics. The objective was to address the vast amount of high-dimensional data generated with microarray gene expression analysis. As a result, it was recognized that an interactive scientific software tool was needed to conceptualize the ideas evolving from the research collaboration.
QIAGEN Silicon Valley is a company based in Redwood City, California, USA, that develops software to analyze complex biological systems. QIAGEN Silicon Valley's first product, IPA, was introduced in 2003, and is used to help researchers analyze omics data and model biological systems. The software has been cited in thousands of scientific molecular biology publications and is one of several tools for systems biology researchers and bioinformaticians in drug discovery and institutional research.
Stratagene California is an American biotechnological company based in La Jolla, California, a maker of life science research and diagnostic products. It was established in 1984 and incorporated in California. It has been involved with the fields of cellular analysis, cloning, cytogenomics, DNA methylation and DNA Sizing and Quantification and food testing. In 2007, Agilent Technologies acquired Stratagene for $250 million, spinning off certain business assets and licensing certain molecular diagnostics technology to a new entity, Decisive Diagnostics. As of October 2011, the Chief Executive of the new company is Joseph Sorge, original founder and CEO of Stratagene.
Hannes Smárason is an Icelandic executive and entrepreneur who served as the Executive Vice President and Senior Business and Finance Officer of deCODE genetics from in late 1900s and the early 2000s and the Chairman and CEO of Icelandair and its parent company FL Group in the mid to late 2000s. In October 2013 Hannes co-founded and was named CEO of NextCode Health, a startup formed to apply the massive genomics database developed by deCode Genetics to patient care. Hannes negotiated the sale of NextCode to WuXi AppTech and later became CEO of WuXi NextCode.
Tute Genomics is a genomics startup that provides a cloud-based web application for rapid and accurate annotation of human genomic data. Built on the expertise of ANNOVAR, Tute assists researchers in identifying disease genes and biomarkers, and assists clinicians/labs in performing genetic diagnosis. Based in Provo, Utah, Tute was co-founded by Dr. Kai Wang, an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California (USC); and Dr. Reid J. Robison, a board-certified psychiatrist with fellowship training in both neurodevelopmental genetics and bioinformatics.
SOPHiA GENETICS is a data-driven medicine software company with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland and Boston, Massachusetts. It provides genomic and radiomic analysis for hospitals, laboratories, and biopharma institutions. The company was ranked among the 50 smartest companies by the MIT Technology Review in 2017. The company went public on the Nasdaq in 2021, floating at $1.1B.
Personalized genomics is the human genetics-derived study of analyzing and interpreting individualized genetic information by genome sequencing to identify genetic variations compared to the library of known sequences. International genetics communities have spared no effort from the past and have gradually cooperated to prosecute research projects to determine DNA sequences of the human genome using DNA sequencing techniques. The methods that are the most commonly used are whole exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing. Both approaches are used to identify genetic variations. Genome sequencing became more cost-effective over time, and made it applicable in the medical field, allowing scientists to understand which genes are attributed to specific diseases.
