I'm also thinking of the millions of Canadians who make sacrifices every day to help fight COVID-19. We're all facing extreme uncertainty, but we're showing a great deal of strength and resilience.
The challenges facing our world—in human health and disease, climate change and food security—do not involve inanimate objects but the living world and living systems, the world of biosciences. At the heart of these living systems lies DNA, the blueprint of life. DNA is the basis of the science of genomics. At Genome Canada, we believe genomics, responsibly applied, will change the world for the better. That is especially true now as Canadians are in the grip of a terrible biologic pandemic.
Today I will begin with a brief description of genomics and underscore how it is driving immense advances in biosciences. Then I will provide an overview of how genomics is helping us understand and address the current outbreak. Finally, I will introduce you to CanCOGeN, a new national genomics network launched to coordinate and amplify Canada's efforts.
Today Canada is a world leader in genomic research and the knowledge coming out of genomics is transforming our world for the better, but how did we get here?
Genomics is, at its core, the study of DNA, of genes, and how those genes interact with each other and the environment. It's about reading the blueprint of life and using that knowledge to understand how things work, or in the case of infectious disease, don't work.
Genomics is about data—the generation of molecular data about our health, our diseases, our food, our environment—and then using that data to improve our health, support the environment and improve our standard of living. Genomics really came to prominence during the human genome project completed in 2003. That international effort took 13 years and about $1 billion to complete, the equivalent of a biological moon landing.
Since then, we've gained powerful knowledge, technologies and tools, including the ability to read and interpret an organism's DNA, its genome. We can now sequence a human genome practically overnight and for a few thousand dollars, which we are increasingly doing, as genomics begins to find its way into our clinics, our public health labs, our companies and our research institutes. Genomics is producing massive datasets, which, through the application of AI and other tools, are opening our eyes to new understandings, innovative products and groundbreaking therapies.
Canada has some of the world's best researchers working across many sectors from health to agriculture, forestry to energy. They are world leaders in data production and analysis, genome sequencing, gene editing, synthetic biology, novel diagnostics and more.