The hidden impact of inter-individual genomic variations on cellular function

An analysis of the degree of genomic variation between two individual genomes suggests that there may be considerable biochemical differences among individuals. Examination of DNA sequence variations in 14 canonical signaling pathways and Monte-Carlo simulation modeling suggest that the kinetic and quantitative behavior of signaling pathways in many individuals may be significantly perturbed from the 'healthy' norm. Signal transduction pathways in some individuals may suffer context-specific failures, or they may function normally but fail easily in the face of additional environmental perturbations or somatic mutations. These findings argue for new systems biology approaches that can predict pathway status in individuals using personal genome sequences and biomarker data.