Scientists pursue new genetic insights for health

GeekWire Health Tech

It has been nearly two decades since scientists accomplished the first complete sequencing of the human genome. This historic moment gave us an unprecedented view of human DNA, the genetic code that determines everything from our eye color to our chance of disease, unlocking some of the biggest mysteries of human life.

Twenty years later, despite the prevalence of genetic sequencing, considerable work remains to fulfill the promise of these advances to alleviate and cure human illness and disease.

Scientists and researchers are “actually extremely good at reading genomes, but we're very, very bad at understanding what we're reading,” says Lea Starita, co-director of Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine’s Advanced Technology Lab, and Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington.

But that is changing thanks to new tools and approaches, including one called Deep Mutational Scanning. This powerful technique for determining genetic variants is generating widespread interest in the field of genetics and personalized medicine, and it’s the subject of a symposium and workshop on Jan. 13 and 14, 2020, at the University of Washington.

“I think approaches like Deep Mutational Scanning will eventually allow us to make better countermeasures, both vaccines and drugs that will help us combat even these viruses that are changing very rapidly” said Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary and computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Washington Department of Genome Sciences.

Bloom, who researches the evolution of viruses, will deliver the keynote at the symposium, held by the Brotman Baty Institute and the Center for the Multiplex Assessment of Phenotype.

On this episode of the GeekWire Health Tech Podcast, we get a preview and a deeper understanding of Deep Mutational Scanning from Bloom and Starita.

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