Les grands instruments de la biologie moléculaire, prémices de la médecine de demain

Abstract

The Molecular Biology Large Equipments, Beginnings of the Tomorrow Medicine Essentially historical, the concept of very large scientific equipments finds its origin in the particle physics large apparatus. Since 1995, it concerns only physics and universe sciences. With the discovery of DNA in 1953, the emergence of genomics developed the necessity for large biology equipments leading to the creation of the national sequencing and genotyping centers. DNA is going to exert such a fascination on researchers worldwide that a lot of laboratories will concentrate their research on this molecule. At the end of the 70’s, creation of genetic engineering tools will foster understanding of gene action. These discoveries will necessarily converge in the project of the sequencing of all information contained in DNA. The first efficient sequencing method is due to Frederick Sanger but this method will remain at a very small scale. But in 1986, Leroy Hood and Lloyd Smith, two brilliant researchers, imagine the first automatic sequencer. This tremendous evolution will induce a revolution in biology which will mark the research of Genethon, laboratory of the French Association of Muscular Dystrophy. Their research allowed the publication of the physical map of the human genome in 1992 and of the genetic map in 1993. As in the physics field where practical experiments are almost impossible to realise in laboratory, these new tools lead to the creation of two large facilites in biology: the national sequencing center and the national genotyping center. Genomics also study the expression of all the genes. It concerns in fact, a new vision of most intimate aspects of the living being that offer conceptual and medical revolutions of which the instruments are high speed data processing and molecular techniques. This new dimension of man and his pathologies will lead to an individual medicine where the study of the human genome will help to deal more specifically with the patient and the increase of the efficiency of a treatment on patients affected with the same disease.