In 2021, the Russian Ministry of Health, together with the Center for Obstetrics and Gynecology, plans to launch a project to study the genome of newborns. This was stated by the Minister of Health, Mikhail Murashko, reports “Parlamentskaya Gazeta”.
According to the head of the department, this will “touch and reveal the secrets of the emergence of certain diseases.”
In 2019, scientists from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the United States found that the number of mutations in somatic cells increases with age. Biologists have sequenced (determined the nucleotide sequence) the genome of B-lymphocytes of people under the age of 100 years. It turned out that in newborns the average number of mutations reached 463.4, in people 27-30 years old – 1181.9 mutations, and in those who turned 52-75 years old – 2101.7 mutations. Researchers believe this process is key to aging and cancer development.
