Genetic Data Analysis

Introduction

Genetics (WHO, 2002) is the investigation of genes, genetic variety and heredity in living organism. Genetics is the basic of heredity. Heredity is the transmission of genetically based characteristics from ancestor to descendant. Any form of heritable feature is known as a character. Some examples for this type of characters are eye color, hair color, height etc. DNA (deoxyribo nucleic acid) is the main genetic substance of all living organism. DNA of Human being consists of 23 pairs of chromosomes. For example, chimpanzees consist of 24 pair of chromosomes. This means only 2% difference between human and chimpanzee in DNA structure. That is the main reason because humans are said to genetically evolved from ape like creature especially chimpanzee. Genetic studies were carried out since the classical era where the scientist like Aristotle and Hypocrites put forward some theories like how the parental characteristics are passed to the offspring. However, breakthrough was achieved in 19^th century when Gregor Mendal experiments with pea plants and discovered the fundamental laws of inheritance.

In cells gene is part of DNA. Genes can be defined as instruction manual to create a living being. Every gene has two alternative forms. And this alternative form is known as alleles. The four nitrogen bases present in the DNA are adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C). A pair with T and C with G. Thus, in the double stranded form, each strand contains all the necessary information, redundant with its partner strand. Genes are arranged linearly along the DNA sequence. Human DNA consists of 3billion bases. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) more than 99 percent of these bases are identical in all people.

Genetic analysis is the general procedure of contemplating and looking into in fields of science that include hereditary qualities and molecular biology. There are various applications that are created from this exploration, and these are likewise viewed as parts of the procedure. Genetic analysis can be utilized for the most part to depict strategies both utilized in and coming about because of the sciences of hereditary qualities and molecular biology, or to applications coming about because of this research. The process of genetic analysis began in the primitive days itself. Early people found that they could use selective breeding to improve yields and creatures. They additionally distinguished acquired qualities in people that were dispensed with throughout the years. The numerous hereditary investigations step by step advanced after some time.

As we mentioned above genetics is the study of hereditary, which emphasis on the study of limited number of genes with specific function whereas genomics (WHO, 2002; WHA, 2004)is a new term which focus on study of whole organism gene set called as genome. Genomics become popular in the last couple of decades due to the advancement of technologies. But most of the time these two terms are often used interchangeably. We can consider genetics as a subset of genomics. The table 1 shown below give insight to distinction between these two terms.