Google is now using its expertise to determine genetic causes of autism. Autism Speaks, an advocacy group on autism, disclosed that they will partner with Google to search for the clues on the hereditary causes of autism.
Rob Ring, Autism Speaks Chief Science Officer, said to WIRED "we believe that the clues to understanding autism lie in that genome". He also added, "We'd like to leverage the same kind of technology and approach to searching the internet every day to search into the genome for these missing answers".
Google Genomics will be the tool to be used in this project. As human genome sequencing becomes cheaper, the project's cost is only $2,500 rather than the Human Genome Project that cost $3 billion. Since they allowed the dumping of data to the servers by the researchers, Google's cloud capabilities will improve while possible important services will be provided.
David Glazer, director of engineering for Google Genomics, said "You're lot more efficient than shipping around station wagons full of hard drives". Researchers can now look for particular regions and genome sequences rather than the keywords itself.
The President of Autism Speaks, Liz Feld, is hoping that researchers can adapt personalised treatments through deep genetic analysis. "What matters most to us is that this research is going to allow us uncover and understand the various forms of autism", she said.
Though the technological strength of Google is well suited in genomics research, Parkinson's disease and cancer, among others, are also one of the company's targets.
Genomic date has been collected by the Autism Speaks over the decade according to Rob Ring. King said that they realised that some of their biggest problems in biology were really the problems on big data.
This is Google's first venture into health and medicine.