07/28/08 Genome Sequencing

Genome Sequencing. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. I am fascinated with science. The amazing things that have been done just seem to boggle my small brain and one of those incredible scientific breakthrough's is the ability to sequence a genome. If you don't know what that is it would be like taking a car apart and making a map of where every part goes. Why do something like that on a molecular level? Because besides showing us how something is built, it can also show us how to fix it if it is broken, improve it or even destroy it. Diseases are the best example of the latter. Take avian influenza. Genetic coding sequences of avian influenza may shed light into understanding the virus, and developing improved diagnostic tests according to David Suarez of the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory. SUAREZ: The sequence information is very important to help us make diagnostic tests for avian influenza. The most commonly used test for diagnosing avian influenza in the U.S. now is something called Realtime RT PCR test which is looking for basically the genetic signature of the virus in a clinical sample. But our ability to detect those viruses is very dependent on knowing the sequences of the viruses ahead of time. Having that ability can help poultry producers. SUAREZ: And we certainly want to understand and correlate those differences between the genetics and what disease it causes and try to understand that better so that it gives us the better ability to predict which viruses are going to be more dangerous to poultry in the U.S. The research being done came about from the President's National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. SUAREZ: Several years ago the President had an initiative on avian influenza and he did allocate additional money for research. Most of the money went to the human side but some money went to the agriculture side to examine these particular research issues. And again one of those was to get more information on the genetics and viruses that were circulating. Although avian influenza doesn't usually infect people, there have been a number of cases over the years and mainly through direct contact with infected poultry. SUAREZ: One practical application is that because we have much more sequence information to use, we're going to have a much better ability to predict or be able to detect avian influenza and that's a very important contribution that this sequenced data will provide. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.