BEIJING, May 28 (Xinhuanet) --Dutch scientists claim they have completed the first sequencing of an individual woman's DNA.
The researchers at Leiden University Medical Center reported the sequencing of the entire genome of one of their female researchers, clinical geneticist Marjolein Kriek.
"If anyone could properly consider the ramifications of knowing his or her sequence, it is a clinical geneticist,¡± Professor Gert-Jan B. van Ommen, leader of the research team and director of the Center for Medical Systems Biology, said in a news release issued Monday.
The first sequencing of a composite human genome was announced in 2001. At least four individual male genomes and those of about a dozen animals have so far been sequenced.
Women don't possess the male Y chromosome, but instead have two X chromosomes. Van Ommen said that could lead to genomic differences between the sexes.
"As the X chromosome is present as a single copy in half the population, the males, it has undergone a harsher selection in human evolution. This has made it less variable," he explained. "We considered that sequencing only males, for 'completeness,' slows insight into X-chromosome variability. So it was time, after sequencing four males, to balance the genders a bit."
No other scientists have yet verified the Dutch data, but some experts said they were eager to see the sequence.
"The more data that is made public, the more chances we have of making sense of the similarities and differences between them and to understand the patterns of how genes work together," said Stephen Scherer, a genetics expert at the Hospital for Sick Children at the University of Toronto. Scherer was not connected to the Dutch research.
(Agencies)
