I believe genomics will revolutionize the way we develop new personal care actives and products in the future and help us gain fundamental insights into how skin functions and ages.

All applications of genomics had as its origins the human genome project whose main goals were to provide a complete and accurate sequence of the 3 billion DNA base pairs that make up the human genome and to identify the estimated 30,000 genes that make up human DNA. The project was formally launched in 1990 and was declared complete on April 14, 2003. It was the world’s largest collaborative biological project (1).

What makes us unique as humans are epigenome differences since 99.9% of our DNA is the same (2). Much of skin aging is now believed to be due to epigenetic changes caused by the wrong genes being turned on and good ones being turned off. All of us have a unique epigenome, even fraternal twins whose DNA is identical. Studies involving twins have shown that up to 60% of the skin aging between individuals can be attributed to genetic factors, with the remaining 40% due to non-genetic factors (6).

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Published via Prospector; 9th October 2020