(GIST OF SCIENCE REPORTER) GENOME INDIA PROJECT

(MARCH-2024)

The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) officially announced the completion of the ‘10,000 genome’ project.

It was an attempt to create a reference database of whole-genome sequences out of India.
The United Kingdom, China, and the United States are among the countries that have programmes to sequence at least 1,00,000 of their genomes.
About 20 institutions across India are involved in the project with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad being the lead institutions coordinating the project.

Determining the arrangement of adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G), which constitute an organism’s DNA, is known as genome sequencing.
Whole genome sequencing is a laboratory process that can be used to ascertain an organism’s genome’s base order all at once.

DNA shearing: Initially, scientists cut the DNA, which is made up of millions of nucleotide bases (As, Cs, Ts, and Gs), into pieces small enough for the sequencing machine to read using molecular scissors. Adenine (A), Cytosine (C), Guanine (G), and thymine (T) are the nucleotide bases.
DNA barcoding: To determine which fragment of sheared DNA belongs to which bacteria, scientists add small DNA tags, or bar codes. This is comparable to how a product at the grocery store is identified by a bar code.
DNA sequencing: It involves combining and running various bacteria’s barcoded DNA via a DNA sequencer.