Personalised medicine: Breakthroughs in DNA analysis

Personalised medicine is an emerging concept in patient care where the diagnosis and treatment of patients will be strongly influenced by identified genetic profiles. There is a general awareness that drugs may typically demonstrate a considerable degree of variation of effectiveness within a typical population¹ and the value of medication may be further degraded by low levels of medication compliance.² In the new world of personalised medicine, the role of genetics is increasing seen as matching genetic profiles to specific target treatments to achieve higher levels of effectiveness.

Within an individual human genome, there are around 3.2 billion ‘letters’ of DNA code based on the nucleic acid sequence GACT. Around 5% of this DNA is identified as containing 20,000 genes which contain the ‘blueprints’ for manufacturing proteins within the body. While the remaining DNA information has been previously described as ‘junk’ DNA, this component is now identified as having a role in regulating genes and controlling their activity. Opinions on the role of so called ‘junk’ DNA have been recently reviewed by Palazzo and Gregory.³