Iceland's Genes

The latest Technology Review magazine has an article [PDF] on Iceland's deCode Genetics' efforts to use Iceland's collective genetic information, to create new medicines. Iceland is unique in the world, because it has a small genetic heritage -- it hasn't been often 'polluted' -- it's genetically pristine compared to most of the world. In addition, Iceland has a pretty good universal health care system, and they keep good medical records. This is advantageous, when you're doing genetic studies, as you can trace back generations. deCode's work is focused on finding the genes associated with some common ailments, such as heart disease, diabetes, asthma, etc. To do this, they've enlisted the help of the country's population, and the government. More than half of the country's adult population has already given their DNA to deCode. deCode's approach is relatively straight forward. They first narrow their focus to suspect chromosome regions that may hold the genetic culprit for a disease. They did this by looking at shared chromosome stretches amongst individuals suffering from the same disease. Once the playing field is narrowed, deCode turns to public genetic databases, looking for genes already identified that cause certain problems associated with the disease in question. Once they've found what they're looking for in the library, they then get to work to produce gene-related solutions to a genetic problem. Instead of dealing with the disease, they deal with the genetic predisposition for having the disease. Sounds great, right? It is. Only problem however, is that for this approach to have wide application, there needs to be developed a quick and easy way of being able to test for someone's predisposition for a strong of diseases. Ideally, it should be as simple and cheap as getting a blood test or x-ray. Unfortunately, we're not there yet. A bigger problem than this however, is determining if the genetic markers for a disease in one population readily translates to another population. Not all geneticists think this is so. Read more in the TR article.