Happy Saturday People! We are so excited about our recent I AM HUMAN Collection and this blog post– our first of many! Hopefully, you enjoy the ride and find what we contribute to your wealth of knowledge intriguing and engage in our "Life in PrinCple". It will be a mix of educational facts, stories and positive notes as well as a little glimpse into our world– some lighthearted fun! It's all good.

Ok, so on to why I am writing this post today. I wanted to give a little insight into exactly what is Genomics without boring you too much and what it means to me. By definition, genomics is noted as the branch of molecular biology which focuses on the structure, function, evolution, and mapping of genomes. Genomes are pretty much the COMPLETE set of an organism's DNA– this includes genes. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is made up of four chemicals called bases and represented by four letters of the genetic code: A, T, C, and D. Got that so far? Cool!

Ahhh... so then what's the difference between genomics and genetics? Genetics deals more with heredity and focuses on the function of one single gene while genomics studies the complete overall set of genes and its interaction with the environment.

According to a study conducted called The Human Genome Project in April 2003, three billion base pairs of letters were identical in 99.9% of humans and only 0.1% were different. The difference might seem insignificant but it is allowing researchers to dive more into complex diseases such as cancers and rare disorders to find out why certain individuals, regardless of heredity (genetics), are more prone to these diseases than others. That 0.1% has contributed to 9 out of 10 of the leading causes of death in The United States. Remember that the 0.1% contains three billion base pairs of letters.

Now, on to why I love this knowledge and what it means to me. I have started traveling more recently and actually left New York City to live overseas while launching this brand with my business partner. New York is filled with so much diversity and culture. I love it for that reason because at the end of the day you learn that some of the things we fight each other for are meaningless in the overall scheme of things. Now that I am overseas, I have immersed myself to this world as an "outsider" while continuing to meet other people from different parts of the world. We all laugh the same, cry the same and love. We are all just human. If we use our differences as a way to enlighten our minds, think about how much farther we would be as a society.

Cheers,
Ms. Y 

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Source: The National Human Genome Institute