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National genetic database to 'understand' disorders

MUMBAI, APRIL 5. In order to understand the reasons for several genetic disorders which have affected many families for generations, Indian geneticists have decided to register a ``People's Foundation'' to establish a national genetic database, according to Dr Lalji Singh, director, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology.

The Foundation will be registered with the permission from Central government and work on the database would be carried out in both rural and urban areas, Singh told PTI here.

Since the future healthcare would be on the basis of preventive and preventable methods, ``the establishment of National Citizens' Genetic database was very essential,'' he said.

In India, there are 5000 well-defined human population groups and is also important to study the interaction between genes and environment, Singh said adding, there are as many as 5000 genetic disorders in human species caused by 5 to 50 mutated genes.

During a preliminary survey of people affected with genetic diseases in Jaunpur, women in a family for four generations were found to have malformed hands and feet with no fingers at all. In another case in Gorakhpur, several families had at least two generations of teenagers and adults having muscular distrophy, Singh said.

``We have several such incidents in the country and therefore, the geneticists in the country took a decision to establish a genetic database of every citizen so that the scientists could understand the cause of the diseases and disorders,'' he added.

``In fact we are trying make it purely for the citizens of the country and therefore planning to collect Re 1 from each citizen, once the registration is over, to take care of the entire project,'' Singh said.

The five resource centres could be established with sophisticated labs and lesser sophisticated centres and not so sophisticated centres at district and panchayats and all connected by one National Resource Centre, he said.

The whole procedure of the data bank would be based on the model which has been established in Spain recently where initially the biological samples of 1000 healthy individuals aged between 18 and 25 were taken.

-- PTI

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