On April 6, biotechnology company Celera Genomics announced that it has identified all of the pieces of DNA that make up the human genome. The company predicted that it could assemble its collection of short pieces into a complete, ordered genome draft this month. Sprinkled throughout these 3 billion letters are the 80,000 or so sequences, called genes, that code for proteins.
Researchers also hope to be able to learn who'll be most likely to respond to medications.
In neuromuscular disease research, the most immediate benefit of the genome draft will likely be an increase in the speed at which the remaining unknown disease-causing gene defects are found. Speer thinks that decoding the genome will be a significant step forward in speeding the rate of disease-gene identification. At the recent Pittsburgh Orthopaedic Tissue Engineering Symposium, co-sponsored by MDA, experts in these specialties met to discuss progress in renewing tissues such as muscle, cartilage, bone and tendons. The recent isolation of stem cells from both muscle and bone marrow that are capable of renewing muscle when transplanted from one mouse to another has stimulated a flood of studies aimed at determining the precise nature and capabilities of these cells. Huard found that stem cells were much more efficient at incorporating into host muscle after transplantation than myoblasts.