Dr Atta has become the first Muslim man with this distinction, while he is the third one among a list of renowned people in the world whose genomes have been mapped by scientists. PHOTO: FILE
The former chairman of the Higher Education Commission, Dr Attaur Rahman, has become the first Pakistani whose genome has been mapped by Pakistani scientists at a cost of $40,000 in just 10 months.
“This historical achievement has made him the first Pakistani and the first Muslim in the world history with a complete genomic mapping,” said Dr Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary, the director of the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences, on Thursday at the Dr Panjwani Centre for Molecular Medicine and Drug Research (PCMD). The work was done with scientists from the Beijing Genomic Institute.
Pakistan has also become the sixth country in the world to map the sequence of one of its nationals after the US, China, UK, Japan and India, he added with pride.
Dr Rahman’s genome shows that Pakistanis are more similar to Europeans than Chinese and Africans, said Assistant Professor Dr Muhammad Kamran Azim who headed the team of the Pak Genome Project. It also shows 200,000 specific sites unique to the Pakistani human and 80,000 sites common with the Indian human. However, this is not the exact representation of a Pakistani and facts may differ once they develop an average genome of Pakistan since the ‘nation’ is a mix of several ethnicities, he said.
An average genome, he explained, will be obtained by making a pool of all the characteristics, ie, the differences and similarities of all the people living in the country.
The decision to choose Dr Atta ur Rahman was a conscious one as he is not only the most prominent scientific figure in Pakistan but one whose ancestors spent almost three centuries in Multan and then moved a hundred years back to Delhi.
Human Genome mapping is the process of producing a sequence of DNA that makes our genes. It holds all our genetic instructions i.e. hereditary information, and provide the “genetic code” that allows our bodies to develop, grow, and function.
Thus the knowledge of a ‘nation’s’ genetic code can be used to see what diseases are common to that people so that it can be avoided, said Dr Choudhary. “It is also a source of immense national pride,” he said emotionally. The first Human genome mapping project involved 18 countries and started in 1990. The genome of the first American was mapped at a cost of six billion dollars over ten years.
However as the genome research was carried out on individuals from the North American eastern coast and western Europe, criticism soon rose that it only represented a western human instead of the whole world. China stepped in and mapped its first human. The UK, India and Japan followed suit.
The Pakistan Genome Project cost was shared equally by Pakistan and China. The machines were in Beijing and the knowledge was supplied by Pakistan. While we have the same technology, our set is so small that it would have taken our machines a hundred years to complete the sequencing of three billion base pairs, he said. This is not to say that Pakistan is a novice in the field. It has already submitted the genome of the mango chloroplast and date palm chloroplast to the international database.
The complete sequence will be published in the prestigious scientific journals Nature and Nature Biotechnology. The complete data will also be submitted to an American databank and will be accessible to everyone, said Dr Kamran Azim. He added that the main goal of the centre now is to attach the same extensive technology to the PCMD and launch the project of mapping of an average Pakistani, which desperately needs funding.
Dr Yong Zhang, the head of genomics at the Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen, was on the team.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 1st, 2011.
and we should care why? Recommend
Genome doesn’t make religious distinctions – maybe they didn’t teach that in your science class. I hope you think that 40K was worth finding out that Pakistan and India genome were similar.Recommend
I think we should clone this guy… Recommend
who else the great team of Dr khan. and in less cost both things thanks a lot our heros.Recommend
I find this statement amazing. What is a Pakistani genome? Pakistan only came into being 60 years ago. Is there a specie called Pakistani already? Its Indian genome. Dr Atta is an Indian, genome wise, simple as that. Get over it. No point beating about the bush.
Oh how much we wish we had Arab genomes. How embarrassing that after expressing so much hate for Indians we turned out to be Indians ourselves.Recommend
Excellent Work, No doubt its need of era.Recommend
bravo……nice work…Recommend
Pakistani and Indian genomes have similarities compared to others, he saidRecommend
the genetic differences we identified may predispose this particular individual to certain diseasesRecommend
Atleast now pakistani scientist started accepting that pakistani genes are more similar to indian genes than any other genes. Good progress. Recommend
“Pakistani and Indian genomes have similarities compared to others,” No way, how could this be possible? I always held that we are the direct descendants of Muhammad bin Qasim.Recommend
zaberdastRecommend
Its such pleasant to see such a news =)Recommend
ET, could you please follow the footsteps of world’s leading newspapers and explain briefly about the main subject of the news if it is believed to be unknown for the mass. In this case it is “Genome Mapping”, and as a reader I and definitely others would also appreciate if you, in the end of this news post explain what is “Genome Mapping”.Recommend
@Cautious:
No Pakistins have Chinese genes, their ever green friends not Indian enemiesRecommend
Congratulations to Pakistan! Today after soooo many years —> “Proud to be Pakistani”Recommend
great contribution…………..Recommend
@Jameel:
lol @ Indian genome. India didn’t existed before 1948. India of Ashoka, Babur or the British Raj is not the same. And even in today’s India itself there are obvious racial differences: Pakistanis are just comparable to the Punjabis and, in some way, North Indians.Recommend
well don pakistani saentest we proud of youRecommend
Pakistani gnome as similarities to Indian gnome. This is why it causes Pakistanis to celebrate Basant.
But it also causes them be a bit coward and stink a bit. Is there a way to remove Indian gnome from Pakistanis? I’ll be the first to donate for that project.Recommend
To the less discerning reader: OnlyUS, UK, China, Japan and India have successfully managed to sequence the human genome before. We didn’t expect our genome to resemble Japan’s the most now did we?
Let Iran or Afghanistan sequence their genomes and we might well find out that our genome matches their’s greatly as well. Again, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
All in all its a great achievement for science in Pakistan.Recommend
@Cautious:
Are you suggesting that we should have stopped funding science the day we found out that the human genome is 96% similiar to that of a chimpanzee’s?Recommend
It’ll be wrong to say that no Pakistanis have similarities with Indian population, same as all Pakistanis are same or similar to Indians. Rather it is appropriate to say that majority of Population from Punjab and Sindh of Pakistan has genetic similarities to North Indian Population in India. There is no such thing as Pakistani genome Indian Genome. What is now Pakistan and parts of India were ruled by Greeks, Turks, Persians, Arabs and Mongolians as well as Indo-Aryans-Dravidians, there is bound to be some traces of each other’s genetics because of living in close proximity for centuries. Yet there are very distinct people living in both countries with no similarities even to their own countrymen.
Historically boundaries of what is now India and Pakistan has been changed many times and people have migrated in from many neighboring cultures. Indians in eastern states of India and Asian stock (Tibeto –Burmese), mostly Dravidian in the South (similarities to Pacific Islanders), African Sheedees have little in common with the majority mix population (mainly Indo Aryan tribes) of central and northern India. Similarly in Pakistan there are people of distinct genetic mix, for example Dardics(no similarities to neighboring populations) , Baltis(tibeten) , Kalash (Thought to be Greek , although not proven by genetic tests) Hazaras (Mongolian and central Asian) . Pathans (East Iranian, Turkic and Jewish mix). Baluchis (Iranian, similarities to Kurds) and many Pakistanis of Arab last names are not necessarily similar to each other or to the Majority Punjabi and Sindhi (Same as Indo Aryan tribes of India) people of Pakistan.
Either way it is nice that they have done this research, and should be expanded. It can be helpful in finding cures for diseases associated with genetic mix for our population (for ignorant people who think this was a useless research).Recommend
This article is really poorly-written, as was the first one covering this issue (published yesterday). Instead of discussing the details of how the genome-mapping was achieved, the collaboration and work involved, the article chooses to focus on jingoistic “pride” statistics such as ‘first Muslim’ etc – why is this even remotely relevant? Instead it would have been nice to read about what we can learn from a Pakistani’s genome being mapped, from a medical/health care perspective, for drug development etc (as Pakistanis will clearly share more commonalities amongst themselves than with genomes mapped of people in the US etc). It would have been nice to read more about the (practical) impact this detailed knowledge of Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman’s genome will have on creating avenues for medical/biotech advancement that is focused on diseases/mutations common amongst Pakistanis. Instead. ET chose to focus on the more meaningless ‘pride’ aspect…Recommend
Genome sciences extend far beyond any cultural, ethnic or national boundaries. A person’s genome is their blueprint or code which is used as the master template to produce all the proteins in their body. The genome will be very similar between all humans, and differences in the scale of 0.01% or less can be used to differentiate the genomes of people from different nationalities. On the other hand differences of just 1% – 2% tell humans apart from apes and monkeys. All life shares a vast majority of genes. There is no doubt that genes specific to people from the Indian sub-continent are highly similar and we are indeed the same ethnic group. One comment about being the descendant of Mohd Bin Qasim and hence having a unique genome is ludicrous. There is more evidence of Muslims marrying and propagating outside of Islam in the sub-continent than there is within Islam. Remember, this is a history that extends over 1000 years. The Indian gene pool is magnificently rich and can be traced in a vast majority of Europeans as well because the Indo-European human migrations greatly predate any concept of Indian or Islamic civilizations. Coming back to the technology and its vast potential, this is a very significant achievement for Pakistan because of what it can mean for the future. It can revolutionize the study of sub-populations that are pre-disposed to certain diseases, so we can fight a case to increase the funds for health care that will treat these conditions. It can teach us very intensively about the processes that govern disease formation and how these diseases can be prevented in the future. A Pakistani genome should have less to do with pride statistics and more to do with potential and future outlook. Recommend
For all he has done for advancement of education he deserved to be recognised in this manner. In fact millions of Pakistanis are thankful to what he has done in Higher Education sector which will even benefit generations to come.
As for the religious aspect of this advancement, I just find it absurd to boast or moan about it. I am sure genome doesn’t care which religion you follow or passport you carry!
But yes interestingly all those people who are hitting on India-Pakistan thing, you do have to realise that a large number of Pakistanis are not just Indian, rather a mixture of Turk, Central Asian, Afghan, Persian and Arab with the local Indian population.Recommend
Most of the comments i see here are from very stupid people who instead of taking pride in our nations achievements start blabbering nonsense which doesnt make any sense. Rehman, Cautious and Jameel u ppl are bird brains. If u dont like staying here get lost. we may have our ups and downs but it shouldnt be always down dat u ppl write. Really u r AHE. Just replace the stars with SSOL and u get ur magic words Recommend
They should map Zardari’s genome and then try to eliminate any one with similar genome patterns.Recommend
What is fascination about religion? In what does a genome distinguish between a muslim and christian? Or these really scientists? Or do they have fake degrees?Recommend
Unspeachable…
implication of this genome predetermine knowledge is a MUST…and pakistani government should concern this to make Pakistan a healthy nation.Recommend
great work.
implication of this genome predetermine knowledge is a MUST…and pakistani government should concern this to make Pakistan a healthy nation.Recommend
“Pakistani and Indian genomes have similarities compared to others”
WHAT!!!
We, Pakistanis are Arabs. Period. This is all a conspiracy agnaist the Muslim Ummah and Islam. Enemies of Islam are trying their best to destroy the unity of Muslims. All this gene technology is from the west. This is how the kafir tries to fool us.
My dear fellow Muslims, do not fall prey to the false propaganda of the enemies of Islam.
There is no such thing as genetics. We are all created uniquely by Allah.
Allah O Akbar!
Pakistan Zindabad!
Recommend
@Jameel
Study the details of the project.
We are distinguished as a Pakistani so we have to start from here. This study leads you to the evolution process as well.
For Pakhtuns
It would be Pakistani > Paktuns > Mangolians/Tajiks/Uzbeks > Persians
wait buddy the guys have just started studying it, long long way to go. Recommend
@Assad Saheb, Sir who cares what does this “Genome Mapping” really mean the readers can Google it to find.its meaning. Our immediate concern should be to run another similar test ( this time no Chinese involvement but only Saudis ) that would not only refute the findings of earlier test but also prove once for all that we have no similarities what so ever minute they may be with Indians. If Indians say they have similarities with us then it is is their fault something wrong with them.Recommend
This is only one person’s genome matching an Indian. By the way the muslim Moghuls ruled India for the longest time -The famous ”Moghul Empire”.Recommend
china gave half of the cost and full technology. We beggars can beg from others and make fool of ourselves.. Why do my taxpayer money be wasted on useless stuff? These research suits big economies like US, China and India … not hungry, deseased, poor, uneducated beggars like us. Recommend
Congratulations, It is a good sign of progress.Recommend
Salam,
Genome = total DNA content of a cell.
DNA has all the information about a person in the form of genes (eye colour, body etc etc.). DNA is composed of four bases Adenine =A, Guanine = G, Cytosine = C and Thymine = T
every individual has different DNA sequence from another individual in the form of SNPs (pronounced = snips) S=short, N = nucleotide, P = polymorphisms, e.g: one person’s gene might have A instead of G at a single place making him different for the other person.
according to my knowledge the most popular method of finding the DNA sequence (ATGGCCCCC bla bla bla…..) is Sanger method, and this is called mapping the genome.
Proud of them.
ALLAH HAFIZ.Recommend
I congratulate Dr Profeesor Atta-ur- Rehman on this great achievement of Genome Mapping. I suggest that an institute may be established to further promote Genome Mapping.Our scientist are quite capable to further improve ranking at global level.Recommend
Congrats to the team of scientists and China for supporting the advancement of science in Pakistan. Irrespective of common Indian trolls present on ET comment boxes, and trying to search and feed on their favorite line of articles, it is a great achievement.
Well done Dr. Atta.Recommend
This is an excellent achievement for Pakistan……and apart from a few things i don’t think there is any thing wrong in the article including tagging the genome as Pakistani or Chinese or what ever..this is how we are divided today so it’s much easier for a common reader to understand..period.Recommend
What’s the point of saying he is the first Muslim? This is in interesting article which I agree with written in response to the above titled “When will the first Jehovah’s Witness be sequenced?
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/06/when-will-the-first-jehovahs-witness-be-sequenced/Recommend
@PK Expat:
Sir, the comment of Muhammad bin Qasim was sarcasm.Recommend
That’s really great to hear that such advancement our scientist achieve. I would really appreciate that if you people stop arguing with them about Pakistani genomes similarities with Indians, They are saying what they see/ observe. The question to all of you people why not we can be similar to Indians, all humans are similar to each other. As we are living as neighbors so we can be similar to each other.
@ Fahim, You are right our rulers are begging to other countries, They are beggar, we are not!!! They are begging on our name and got in their bank accounts. Stop talking like that. Stop taking self pity!! Keep in mind that in India 400 Million people sleep without electricity. Their government is doing same, our biggest mistake was we followed US from 1948 and import the things and they used their own, now their policy changed like China and they grew much like China. Dr Atta Ur Rehman was trying to develop us but we will not stop voting rulers like this so we have bear!
May Allah save and prosper Pakistan!!Recommend
Choudhary is a gujjar. Till gujjars,jatts.rajputs living in pakistan. you will find always Indian traces. Isn’t it?Recommend
Good to have data backup. You never know when you’ll be attacked by HAARP.Recommend
Guys keep it in mind that it is a Genome map of a single man that resembles mor with Indian genome. It is not representation of whole Pakistani Population. Resemblance of Dr Atta genome with Indian genome may be due to ancestoral reasons.So, it is not the thing to be worried about. We knoe we are Pakistanis and Indaian is our worst enenmy. If Pakistani genome resembles Indian genome more then every Pakistani should favour india but we hate India. Genes might be samer but expression is different.Recommend
The research is , no doubt, a pragmatic step towards technological issues
but
“Dr Rahman’s genome shows that Pakistanis are more similar to Europeans than Chinese and Africans”
statement could not be digested easily.
what the scientist wants to prove from this statement..?Recommend
For whatever you believe’s sake stop the irrelevant discussion over nothing! There have been very few incidents in my lief where I have seen this much retarded discussion on a public forum.
And Tribune seriously you need to put up a country or location badge from the IP address of every commentators. Your posts generally serve as a Troll Cheesecake – and they love to nom at it!Recommend
@Waqas Malik:
Dr. Rahman is an outsider :D.
Man, this line states the result, not anything further to proof.Recommend
@Riaz Akbar:
Atta-ur-Rehman has not done anything, it is the other team who conducted this thing, so praise that team, dear.Recommend
@Jameel:
there was no such thing as india either 60 yrs back!!Recommend
This is just one person of PK we are talking about, yes! he has direct descendants from India, but it would have been a totally different scenario if a Pashtons’ Genome was being mapped, or a Balochi as said =
‘However, this is not the exact representation of a Pakistani and facts may differ once they develop an average genome of Pakistan since the ‘nation’ is a mix of several ethnicities’.
So please let us not squander over it, but rather enjoy it for being the reason that we are Sixth nation in the World to do so, and give a HUGE THANKS to our true friends and brothers and sisters in CHINA for helping us out, and pray that more milestones such as these are achieved in future. Recommend
Spot on MK on the history of sub continent…..but i dont beleve in any ethinicty,genome or religion when it comes to nationality…pakistanis should only have one genome and that is PAKISTAN….for me all the humans in the world are the children of ADAM as he was the first human on this earth…..so we are all Cosuins..hurrayyyyyy…Recommend
Is it really a significant, novel and scholastic achievement? The news is that DNA of Dr. Iqbal Choudary’s mentor….his highness Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman……has been sequenced without any significant contribution of PCMD. What’s contribution of PCMD? They might have contributed in extracting DNA, getting it sequenced by paying some US$20’000 exchequers money and analyzed it……….what a marvelous achievement? If this contribution of extracting nucleic acid and interpreting DNA sequences is by somehow any spectacular achievement then God forbids……every other graduate student is scientist.
For God’s sake………..stop making us fool…………..politicians are enough to do this job ;)Recommend
@Jameel,
while your point is correct, you have to remember that genomic features are relics of events that happened at evolutionary timescales; hence, the “typical” Pakistani (I know that there can’t be one) genome will probably contain all sorts of features from Indian, Persian, Afghan, Central Asian, etc populations.
Come to think of it, Pakistanis my guess is that as a group probably have the most heterogeneous genomes compared to any other population in the world. We have interacted (or more precisely, reproduced) with people from all over.
Also, as a genomics expert, I can tell you that the $40,000 cost seems kind of high; it would be interesting to know the sequence coverage they aimed for. There are numerous efforts to push the price of sequencing the genome of a single human to $1,000, which is on the horizon.
Anyway, it would certainly be interesting to see genome sequence data from lots of Pakistanis because it would enable us to learn about ourselves. Also, it would also give convincing evidence to the ~50% of Pakistanis (my family included) who are under the delusion that they descended directly from the Prophet (PBUH)…..but they probably won’t believe that….Recommend
Its all non sense talking about genetics. What are your deeds that matters. We shoud not involve in this kind of discussion. Its all waste of time. We should talk about how Dr. Sahib attained this honourable position.Recommend
it seems that the genome mapping done is 100% correct it does not seems at all a part of propoganda .I have seen comments above that we are decendents of arabs ( the samians ) is not correct ,we are more arians than samians because from the valleys of himalian mountains the arians migrated to warm planes of afghnistan ,Pakistan and India and they also migrated to europe that is why our genome appear similar to indians and nearer to westeners .the historical facts can not be denied .the mixing of arian and samian races started after the arrival of mohhamad bin qasim .Recommend
It’s a great achievment by pakistani scientists, we shouldn’t get ourselves involves in making the differences between pakistan and india only bcoz before few years there was no any name or concept of pakistan so in the history pakistan was nothing it was just only hind and sindh, two major states of this region and the emperior was of hindustan. definately there was, is and will always be the same similarities of indians and now u call pakistanis. but instead of making these differences we are supposed to cogratulat our scientists that they have done great work…..Recommend
Cheap popularityRecommend