New Delhi: The genome sequencing data and insights of over 10,000 Indians was officially released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an event held Thursday by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT).
“This is a historic step for Indian science research, and is the first step towards India’s bio-revolution. I congratulate the scientists behind this project for the compilation of India’s diverse genetic history,” PM Modi said in a video address to an event attended by Union Minister Jitendra Singh.
“In our country, certain adivasi (tribal) communities are really affected by sickle cell anemia. The government has launched schemes for it, but a database like this could help much more,” he added.
Genome sequencing is the process of understanding how the unique DNA of an organism is arranged in its body, thus allowing access to all hereditary material of the organism. The need for an Indian genome sequencing biobank was expressed by Singh, the Minister of State (independent charge) for Science and Technology, in February last year wherein he said that the country needs “Indian solutions using Indian data for Indian problems”.
The Genome India project was launched in 2020 to collect genome samples across diverse sections of the Indian society and conduct whole genome sequencing of 10,000 such samples. Genome sequencing of over 99 different ethnic groups was done by over 20 Indian institutions led by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru.
The project was first completed in February 2024 and India was declared to be the “world’s largest genetic lab”. Since then, the Ministry of Science and Technology has been working on extracting initial insights from the data as well as compiling it in a way allowing information to be shared with the world, including Indian scientists, researchers, academics, and students.
The data, running into 4.5 petabytes, will be housed in a portal by the Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC) in the Regional Centre for Biotechnology, Faridabad.
At the event in Vigyan Bhawan, Singh inaugurated the IBDC data access portal where researchers from India could access the digital repository of Indian genome sequencing. “The implications of this project for genetic science, personalised medicine, disease monitoring and preventative healthcare is enormous,” he said.
“From a country that wasn’t even well known for therapeutic treatments globally, we have now transitioned to a country that is engaging in preventative healthcare. This is the real biotechnology revolution,” the minister said. “And when academics, doctors, and industry utilise this data, it will be part of the bioeconomy revolution.”
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Plan to expand database
Led by Professor V. Narahari of IISc, the GenomeIndia project collected 20,000 genome samples from Indians through the help of nine institutions including IISER Pune, AIIIMS Jodhpur, BRIC-ILS Bhubaneshwar and MZU, Aizawl. While whole genome sequencing is yet to be conducted for 10,000 of these samples, the DBT’s plan is to expand it much more.
“While 10,000 genome sequencing samples is a great start towards building a genetic database of Indians, our country is so wide and diverse that it soon won’t be enough,” DBT secretary Rajesh Gokhale said. “We want to expand it to a database of 1 million Indians, which will require more capacity and resources.”
At the Vigyan Bhawan event, Prof. Narahari showed how the genome sequencing analysis of Indians revealed “tremendous” genetic diversity with five distinct ancestries. The genetic distance between these ancestries too was huge, he added.
Beyond the genetic unpacking though, the data could help in identifying rare diseases in the Indian population, tailoring medicines to suit certain genome types, and expanding gene therapy, the professor said.
The event ended with the DBT releasing a Framework for Exchange of Data Protocols (FeED) to streamline how best to share this data not just with Indian scholars but also with scientists across the world who might want to utilise this huge repository of genome data from an underexplored region.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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