Genetics, genomics, and drug discovery

Abstract

Genetics and genomics are altering the drug discovery process and changing the practice of medicine. Genetic mapping and positional cloning will lead to the identification of disease susceptibility alleles of different genes and this will be further enabled by the publication of the DNA sequence of the human genome. Single nucleotide polymorphisms discovered by comparative sequencing and other methods will also speed up positional cloning and allow pharmacogenetics to proceed in a more comprehensive way than heretofore. Gene expression arrays coupled with studies in model organisms will help to define the function of all genes and determine how the products interact-the next big step. High throughput protein structure determination will also provide large-scale descriptions of protein function but with more biochemical clarity. In all of these studies data integration remains the biggest challenge.