Mcgill Genome News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

The first human genome, which has served as the reference until now, was released approximately 20 years ago. It was a landmark accomplishment that had a huge impact on biomedical research and changed the way scientists study human biology. But it was based on just a few individuals and did not capture the full genetic diversity of the human population. “Since this reference has been at the core of most genomic analysis, it leads to a bias and we might miss important things happening in regions of the human genome that are not present in the reference,” says Guillaume Bourque, a professor in the Department of Human Genetics at McGill University and the Director of Bioinformatics at the McGill Genome Center. He is among a large group of scientists who have recently published an article in Nature about the first generation of a new type of reference genome, called a pangenome, that represents 47 individuals that are as genetically diverse as possible, from Africa, Asia, and the Cari

Cristian grozaGuillaume bourqueDepartment of human genetics at mcgill universityMcgill universityHuman geneticsMcgill genomeCell genomics