It’s always in the news that some specific genes are identified for the first time for specified disorders like diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s.

I feel compelled to learn more about the genes and our health. I don’t remember the scientific names in the news and I don’t have a background in biology or health sciences. I did read a book, The Language of Life by Francis S Collins. Apparently there are numerous organizations, government agencies, universities,and commercial enterprises engaged in genomic research. Then I remembered a search engine expert told us that, instead of trying to remember individual URLs, just search for the resources we desire by keywords and the various organizations’ official websites will appear. So I googled the keywords “human genome” and “Human Genome Project” respectively.

The two result lists of “human genome” and “Human Genome Project” overlap, but they all include, at the top of the lists, informative and authoritative homepage, such as Human Genome Project Information; Genome Programs of the U.S. Department of Energy; Human Genome Project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, etc. I was also pleasantly surprised by the entries of UCSC Genome Browser and its FAQ page. For educators, there are Human Genome Project Education Resources on Dept of Energy’s Information page and the Education page with contents on genetics and genomics from NIH. National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to begin with. In addition, the result lists provide links to related searches, e.g., human genome definition and human genome map which are important for the subject matter at hand.

Then, the millions of search results may be customized by Google Search options and tools. When my search is filtered by the option of “News” in “Past Month,” there is the entry of  The $1000 Human Genome: Are We There Yet? from Scientific American, with links to hundreds of more reports on the same topic. This piece of good news - the price dropped in 10 years from $10,000 to $1,000 per sequencing - is a milestone in the proress of genomic research.

This is where I will take a break until next time when I shall customize my search to “Videos” which would be something to watch for.

Image  Courtesy: National Human Genome Research Institute.