As the cost of sequencing genomes falls, our understanding of how variations in the genome affect our health is growing. And some medical researchers think that newborn genome sequencing could be a huge boon to people’s health. Looking over a baby’s genome, a pediatrician might spot a mutation linked to an aggressive childhood cancer, for instance.
But we cannot say in advance how much benefit genomes at birth would provide, nor can we predict how much anxiety they would create in children or their parents.
Next year, however, researchers are embarking on a study to start getting some answers to those questions. The project, BabySeq, asks a simple question: “If you have your genome readily available from birth, how is that likely to influence your life?”
Read the full, original story here: The Genomic Oracle
Additional Resources:
- “NIH Studies Explore Promise of Sequencing Babies’ Genomes,” Science
- “Genome pioneers,” Register-Guard
- “Scientists Decipher Almost the Entire Genome of an Unborn Baby,” Popular Science
