![]() ![]() Two major technology outbreaks led to the success of WGS technology. ![]() An accurate composite reference sequence representing the entire human genome is now available at. This revolutionary whole-genome sequencing (WGS) technology greatly accelerated the progress of the HGP, which was officially completed on April 14, 2003. Although the history of genomics research can be traced back to the late 1970s and the development of DNA sequencing technology ( 168) and continued in the early 1990s with the initiation of the Human Genome Project (HGP) ( 120), the beginning of the so-called genomic era should be credited to the completion of the first entire genomic sequence of a free-living organism, the pathogenic bacterium Haemophilus influenzae ( 57). The term genomics was coined in 1986 for a new scientific discipline ( 106), one that studies the primary genetic makeup of a living organism by focusing on both the sequence structure and the functional annotation of the entire genome ( 67, 106). The globalized efforts in genomics research that were started in the late 1980s and quickly expanded in the 1990s have offered the world new concepts and regimens for high-speed and large-scale control of emerging and reemerging diseases. ![]() ![]() All these situations support the idea that the battle against infectious diseases is not over and highlight the fact that we are not adequately prepared for dealing with such problems.įortunately, globalization not only increases the speed and scale of the spread of infectious disease far beyond our previous experiences, but also promotes the rapid development of science and technology. Besides worrying about the naturally occurring diseases, experts in security and public health also worry that publicly available scientific information and advanced genetic technologies could be misused to create weapons for bioterrorism, which may already be a real threat ( 176). The rapid spread of novel infectious diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) shows the frailty of the global public health care system, which in turn further affects global tourism and trade ( 194). Globalization of the economy, high-speed international travel, and ever-booming tourism have greatly intensified the situation since the past decade ( 54). In 1994, these infectious diseases were defined as “reemerging or emerging infectious diseases” ( 158). Besides the recurrence of the previously well-controlled infectious diseases, novel etiological pathogens have been reported continuously since the 1970s ( 169). However, infectious diseases did not disappear. By the mid to late 1970s it was believed that infectious diseases soon would be a problem of the past therefore, mechanistic studies of infectious disease and efforts to control infectious disease had, at the very least, lost the prominence they had enjoyed a generation or two earlier ( 100, 162). INTRODUCTION TO GENOMICS AND EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASEīy the 1960s, sanitation improvement, childhood immunization, and an ever-increasing number of antibiotics had notably reduced the morbidity and mortality of infectious disease, at least in the developed countries and regions of the world ( 158). ![]()
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