UK Releases World’s Largest Collection of Human Genomes | Science and Health

oh UK Biobank – a database of genetic, health and other biological data – published complete sequences Genome of 500 thousand volunteers British people. now, researchers Access to data from around the world can be requested and used to investigate the genetic basis of diseases, conditions and other problems by meeting certain criteria.

“Scientists are looking at it like Google Maps,” Rory Collins, chief executive of UK Biobank, told a press conference. “When they want to know lifestyle, environment, genetics and disease pathways, they don’t go to Google, they go to UK Biobank.”

According to the journal Science Nature, Biobank had an investment of £200 million (about US$250 million, with money coming from the UK government, biomedical research funder Wellcome and several pharmaceutical companies). In exchange, the companies had access to the data nine months before its wider release.

According to Michael Weeden, a human geneticist at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom), complete coding of genes allows scientists to detect extremely rare mutations. “We hope that rare species will give us more information about biology.”

In a recent example, a team led by Weeden extracted 200,000 complete genomes from Biobank data and identified 29 rare DNA variants, after accessing the gene bank’s ‘precursor’. These variants had not been detected in previous genetic research.

To date, the Biobank has generated more than 9,000 scientific publications.