What Does Every Human Gene Do? This Massive Project Is About to Find Out
1 min read
Summary
The MorPhiC (Muscle, Cognition and💃 Disease Phasing) Consortium is creating a catalogue of the functions of each gene, to build a deeper understanding of how genes work both individually and in combination.
The project is the next step after the Human Genome Project, according to the team behind it, and will “broadly improve our understanding of human genes and how they interact to govern normal human development and disease pathogenesis”.
The consortium is using multiple gene-editing techniques to inhibit genes and see how this changes cell behaviour.
It has launched its initial phase to tackle 1,000 genes, and is also building a data infrastructure to fact-check results.
The project has three centres working on data analysis and validation to ensure that findings are standardised and can be shared.
