Genes and Disease

From the annual meeting of the European Science Foundation’s current meeting on ‘Unraveling The Complexity Of Human Disease’ we find that the more we learn about unraveling the human genes the more complex the issues of disease becomes. Dr Patrik Kolar, head of the unit for genomics and systems biology in the European Commission's research directorate, said, "Functional genomics and systems biology is an important and integral part of our health research program because an understanding of these basic biological processes has huge potential and real applications for understanding disease, and when you understand disease you can design new drugs." Professor Mark McCarthy of the University of Oxford in the UK, who is searching for genes involved in type 2 diabetes said "For diabetes, weight and age are still better predictors of risk than the gene profile.” Similar comments were heard from researchers in the genetic base of Breast Cancer, the role of genes in Parkinson’s disease and other chronic ailments.