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Cracking The Genetic Code

Last updated on Wednesday, May 7, 2014

(TERRE HUATE) - Your genetic code could be the key to unlocking your future and a Wabash Valley university is on the cutting edge of the technology that holds the answer.

It looks like a normal college science lab and to an extent it is. What you might find fascinating is that in a lab in Indiana State's science building machines are pushing the university to the forefront in the study of genetic code.

"So by sequencing someone's DNA your looking at how the words of the page are written down in their DNA what is the order and how does that order create the proteins that go together to make us whether we have straight hair or curly hair or how we look," Rusty Gonser PhD of Indiana State's Genomic Advocacy program said.

It's a relatively new field at Indiana State, but the study of genetic code is fairly far along.

"We are now at the point where we can sequence someone's DNA in an afternoon," Gonser said. "We can in four hours sequence somebody for 700 different disorders or 400 different cancers."

"Most cancers have a genetic test and that genetic test lets you know whether you have a probability of chemotherapy working, probability of your cancer coming back. Even whether that cancer is a slow or fast growing."

It's not quite a future telling device, but a helpful tool for the future of medicine; and the future of ISU.

"What we can do at ISU is educate people about the technology and train students on that technology to make them a better work force because there's alot of opportunities out there," Gonser said.

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