The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) on Tuesday officially announced the completion of the ‘10,000 genome’ project — an attempt to create a reference database of whole-genome sequences out of India. While India first sequenced a complete human genome in 2006, creating a database that is representative of the diversity of India’s population, is seen as a key step to being able to learn about genetic variants that are unique to India’s population groups and use that to customise drugs and therapies. 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.
