Most changes in our genomes do not really matter. They make us shorter or taller, fairer or darker. But there are a few characters in the genome—a book of six billion letters that make up one’s DNA—which are single handed in their agenda and overwhelming in their impact. “If that character changes then there’s serious disorder,” says Ramesh Hariharan. A computer scientist by training, Hariharan built bioinformatics tools and did analytics on biological data for over a decade. But when his company, Strand Life Sciences, first entered into clinical services three years ago, he was hit by the life-saving decisions his tools had to make.
Book of Life
A spelling error you can’t do much about. Or can you?
One in 100 humans has quirky characters in their genome. Which diseases they predispose a person to, is no longer a mystery. Ramesh Hariharan shows what it takes to solve real-life genomics mysteries, and why we need a law, as of yesterday
