Question: How will studying our genes benefit us?

Ian Simpson answered on 17 Jun 2014:

Much of the research studying genes focusses on diseases, but there are other ways that learning about our genes helps us.

From the disease perspective, by understanding which genes are affected in a particular disease we can study the roles that gene performs in the body to try to work out ways to either correct the loss or minimise the effects. For example we may have a disease that is caused by a mutation in a gene that codes for a vital enzyme whose job is to make a particular chemical in the body. If we find that gene and know what it does we could potentially give that patient a dietary supplement that contains the missing chemical to alleviate (or cure) their condition. One such example would be a disease called Phenylketonuria where people cannot use one of the vital chemicals needed to make proteins and if untreated it accumulates and can lead to very serious side effects. By maintaining a carefully controlled diet those people can live a largely normal life. We only know this because scientists identified the gene responsible for the disease and worked out what it did.

Learning about our genes tells us a lot about how we as humans function, how we came to be as we are and even give us clues about how we are changing as the environment changes about us. Things we learn from these kinds of studies can be used to help minimise risks we may face in the future or suggest changes we could make to our lifestyles to improve health and quality of life.

Learning how genes work is also being used in a very exciting research field called Synthetic Biology. Where scientists are using things we’ve learned about genes to construct artificial biological systems to carry out tasks very efficiently. For example taking advantage of very efficiently evolved enzymes to carry out reactions in factories, clean up oil-spills by digesting the oil, making bio-sensors to detect pollution and many more.

There is also a more fundamental benefit which helps us to understand our place in the natural world and our effects upon it. By comparing our genetic information to other organisms and looking at how functions of genes have evolved over millions of years we can get a better sense of what it is that makes us human.