Databases are used to store all sorts of different information across many different fields. The health industry utilizes databases to solve a multitude of problems through research and analysis on the data. An example of a type of database that is used in the health industry is the genetic database. These are databases that contain information about an organism’s genes, DNA variants, and much more genetic information. By having access to thousands of different organism’s genetic information, scientists can determine patterns in DNA to conclude which genes might be responsible for certain effects in the organism. This method of analysis is helping scientists determine the cause of some of the world’s biggest biological problems, including the father of them all; cancer.
There is an extremely interesting project going on in the health industry called TACCO, which stands for Transcriptome Alterations in Cancer Omnibus. This is an example of a genetic database, containing information on altered cancer genes. Through analysis of this database, researchers can make conclusions about risk levels for different types of cancers in people. Through analyzing the empirical data stored in TACCO, scientists can come up with numbers for the risk probability of a person with certain genes developing a specific type of cancer. For example, if the database contains one thousand instances of a person with a modified gene type A, and ten of those people developed brain cancer, then a link between people of that gene type and brain cancer could be made. If a patient with the same modified gene type A is seen by a doctor, the doctor could use these statistics to determine that this person has a 1% chance of developing brain cancer. The data in this database can also be used to determine survival rates of people with certain types of cancer based on their genetic makeup. There might be an extremely low survival rate for a specific type of cancer, let’s say 2%. However, through analyzing the data in the database, researchers could find that every person who had gene type B survived this cancer. This means that if a person with this gene type is diagnosed with this specific cancer, there survival rate would be above the normal 2%. Even more crucial, this would allow scientists to study this specific gene and figure out what it is about it that allows the people who have it to survive. This research could ultimately result in a cure for that specific type of cancer.
The information in these genetic databases are looked at in different formats to determine patterns. While a pattern between a certain genome may not be evident when analyzing the database itself, it might surface when the database is represented graphically. The information needed to find the causes and cures of earth’s biggest diseases might very well be there in these already existing databases. Now researches and scientists must deeply analyze this data in different ways to extract the patterns hidden among the lines of data. We are getting closer everyday to reaching these cures, and information and data scientists are needed more than ever to find them.
Nick Bagley
Information Science 