When the human genome was decoded in the Human Genome Project, there was great hope that this would be the key to all questions about our biology, disease and age. Unfortunately it was not that easy. We have this huge book that we call DNA, but the much more important question is how the cells of the body use this book, what sites they read, and what that entails. Knowing only the mere sequence does not tell us anything about gene regulation or phenomena of epigenetics.
Maybe it's the huge amount of data that overwhelms human cognitive capacity.
This is where artificial intelligence comes into play.
Recognizing correlations between genetic dispositions and certain biological characteristics is a matter of statistics, but really understanding how everything is related and what causalities underlie the correlations could also be solved by machine learning based on a massive amount of data.
Not only statistical correlations, but a deep understanding of these biological processes gives hope to actually understand and treat diseases such as cancer or, for example, Alzheimer's.
These are exciting times full of hope.
Whether these hopes will be met in the foreseeable future or whether it will take a long time for Dr. AI to understand your personal genetic material properly is certainly one of the most exciting questions of the coming years.
Assuming that development progresses exponentially, it is hoped that accelerating medical advances will soon bring help to a large number of patients.
What is your opinion about the topic?
