What Can Medicine Learn from the Human DNA Sequence?
E. Hofmann
University of Leipzig, Medical Faculty, Institute of Biochemistry,
Liebigstr. 16, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany; E-mail:
EberhardRenate.Hofmann@t-online.de
Received April 27, 2001
The cooperation of biochemistry with clinical medicine consists of two
overlapping temporal phases. Phase 1 of the cooperation, which still is
not finished, is characterized by joint work on the pathogenesis and
diagnostics of systemic metabolic diseases, whereas in phase 2 the
cooperation on tissue and cell specific as well as on molecular
diseases is prevailing. In view of the conceptual revolution and shift
in paradigm, which biochemistry and medicine are presently
experiencing, the content of cooperation between the two disciplines
will profoundly change. It will become deeply influenced by the results
of the research into the human genome and human proteome. Biochemistry
will strongly be occupied to relate the thousands of protein coding
genes to the structure and function of the encoded proteins, and
medicine will be concerned in finding new protein markers for
diagnostics, to identify novel drug targets, and to investigate, for
example, the proteomes of the variety of tumors to aid tumor
classification, to mention only a few areas of interest which medicine
will have in the progress of human genome research. The review
summarizes the recent achievements in sequencing the human DNA as
published in February 2001 by the International Human Genome Sequencing
Consortium and Celera Genomics and discusses their significance in
respect to the further development of molecular, in particular genetic,
medicine as an interdisciplinary field of the modern clinical sciences.
Only biochemistry can provide the conceptual and experimental basis for
the causal understanding of biological mechanisms as encoded in the
genome of an organism.
KEY WORDS: human genome, human DNA sequence, genomics,
proteomics, protein-coding genes, non-protein-coding genes, repetitive
DNA, molecular medicine