|What are Genomics, Proteomics, and Microarray and how do they
pertain to cancer?| |Julia Draznin Maltzman, MD| |Abramson
Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania| What is
Genomics? The recent completion of the human genome sequence has
greatly increased interest in genetics. However, knowing the
human genome sequence is only the beginning; the next step is to
understand the function of each gene and how its? malfunction
may cause disease. From what we know thus far, the human genome
has approximately 35,000 genes. Only about half of these have
recognizable DNA sequences that would suggest a possible
function. Diseases that occur due to genetic mutations have been
recognized in ~1000 genes. Furthermore, the old teaching of one
gene makes one protein has been rejected with the discovery of
alternative splicing and post-translational modification.
Alternative splicing results when a single gene can produce
multiple related proteins; and post-translational modification
is the addition of small molecules t