Genome and Genome Sequencing Technologies

Genome is the vital genetic information of all living beings and being able to decode this genome had been an enduring wish for biologists and geneticists alike.

- Dr. Deepak Singh Bisht, Dr. Harmeet Kaur

The beginning of the era of genome sequencing to its exceptional growth to present day 'Next Gen Sequencing technologies' has been outlined in the following sections in an insightful depiction particularly to apprise the science students with the interesting findings and happenings in this amazingly developing scientific arena.

The Dawn of 20th century witnessed a remarkable scientific feat, The Rediscovery of Mendel, which paved our way towards understanding the pattern of inheritance in living organisms. Although this laid the foundation of modern era genetics, scientists were still sceptical about the exact nature of genetic material. Nonetheless, the quest of unlocking the genetic blueprint instigated scientists to carry out innumerable experiments which provided concrete evidences in support of DNA being the genetic material. The final breakthrough was the discovery of Double helix model of DNA which provided all the plausible answers for the previous assumptions related to the quality and behaviour of genetic material. The Double Helix structure of DNA opened up many more questions for the researchers to ponder upon. The first and the most obvious one was "How the information required for building an organism is stored in DNA and how is it decoded? The answer was provided by Marshal Nirenberg and his colleagues in 1960's when they confirmed that the information is stored in DNA via three letter codes which are a result of non-random combination of four bases A, T, G and C. These letters are four different nucleotides which on forming a triplet, code for their cognate amino acid.