Michelle Loubon

Bac­te­ria from a healthy per­son can be trans­plant­ed to an ill per­son to help them re­cu­per­ate. Vis­it­ing Ja­maican-born Prof Karen E Nel­son, pres­i­dent J Craig Ven­ter In­sti­tute, ex­plained this was one of the strides be­ing made in ge­nomics, which is the study of the col­lec­tive ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al in an or­gan­ism.

Nel­son made this com­ment at a lec­ture themed Ge­nomics Ad­vances–Vast Im­pli­ca­tions for Im­prov­ing Hu­man Health and the World Around Us at Noor Has­sanali (for­mer pres­i­dent) Lec­ture The­atre UWI, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, on Thurs­day.It was host­ed by the Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy/Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences, Ge­nomics Ad­vances. Nel­son was ac­com­pa­nied by Tim Stock­well, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor Vi­ral In­for­mat­ics, who al­so shared his ex­per­tise on top­ics like se­quenc­ing.

Ex­pound­ing on bac­te­ria trans­plants, Nel­son said, "You can take bac­te­ria from a healthy per­son and give it to a sick per­son and the sick per­son would get well. We don't un­der­stand it but the sick per­son gets well. A lot of bac­te­ria are start­ing to emerge."There are huge prob­lems. They are re­sis­tant to and in­vade hu­mans. We are look­ing at dif­fer­ent ways to al­ter the med­i­cine that is pro­vid­ed. We are seek­ing to in­crease un­der­stand­ing of the com­plex dis­eases, health and un­der­stand­ing dis­eases."

Nel­son cit­ed Mali, Africa, as a stomp­ing ground for malar­ia stud­ies.Nel­son said a pop­u­la­tion that gets af­fect­ed im­pacts up­on the like­li­hood of some­body get­ting malar­ia. "Malar­ia sea­son in Mali is in­tense and sharply de­mar­cat­ed," she added.Stock­well: Need to

se­quence virus

In his dis­course, Stock­well spoke about se­quenc­ing in re­la­tion to virus­es–from hu­man, avian and an­i­mal hosts, es­pe­cial­ly swine. Se­quenc­ing, which is a se­ries of the con­se­quences (one's symp­toms and re­spons­es to med­i­cines while bat­tling the virus), would bet­ter help sci­en­tists to treat and un­der­stand virus­es.Stock­well said, "If you have sam­ples, you can do the high qual­i­ty se­quenc­ing for free.

"Dif­fer­ent types of virus­es work with hu­man and avian hosts. Swine are im­por­tant. Japan­ese virus­es work close­ly with measles, mumps and rubel­la. There is the need to look at the da­ta. Peo­ple are do­ing sam­ples from around the world. If you have sam­ples, you can do the sam­pling for free."

Stock­well said in the old days, there was one flu. "More flus are present to­day and re­quire next gen­er­a­tion se­quenc­ing. There is the need for the lab to deal with the big da­ta...Many dif­fer­ent uni­ver­si­ties are look­ing at new ways of analysing da­ta. We de­cid­ed to ex­per­i­ment with syn­thet­ic ge­net­ics."

While the team con­tin­ues to en­gage in re­search, Stock­well said it would un­earth "how the virus­es are evolv­ing and what should go in­to the vac­cine. We are track­ing the flu over time."In an ef­fort to save peo­ple's lives, Stock­well said, "There is the need for faster vac­cine de­vel­op­ment. We need to shrink the time scale, put the fo­cus on syn­thet­ic ge­nomics, look at the se­quence that is avail­able elec­tron­i­cal­ly."

He cit­ed ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes in the schools as a key in­ter­ven­tion. Among those present were Prof John Agard, De­part­ment of Life Sci­ences. Agard said: "It is in­ter­est­ing to see the vast range of things they are do­ing. It shows how far we are be­hind."

About J Craig Ven­ter In­sti­tute

It (JCVI) is a non-prof­it ge­nomics re­search in­sti­tute found­ed by J Craig Ven­ter, PhD, in Oc­to­ber 2006. The In­sti­tute was the re­sult of con­sol­i­dat­ing four or­gan­i­sa­tions: the Cen­tre for the Ad­vance­ment of Ge­nomics, The In­sti­tute for Ge­nom­ic Re­search (TIGR), the In­sti­tute for Bi­o­log­i­cal En­er­gy Al­ter­na­tives, and the J Craig Ven­ter Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Joint Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre. It has fa­cil­i­ties in Rockville, Mary­land and La Jol­la, Cal­i­for­nia.

The in­sti­tute stud­ies the so­ci­etal im­pli­ca­tions of ge­nomics in ad­di­tion to ge­nomics it­self. Re­search in­volves ge­nom­ic med­i­cine; en­vi­ron­men­tal ge­nom­ic analy­sis; clean en­er­gy; syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy; and ethics, law, and eco­nom­ics.The in­sti­tute em­ploys over 400 peo­ple, in­clud­ing No­bel lau­re­ate Hamil­ton Smith.

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