Comprehensive Analyses of DNA and RNA

The Genomics Working Group is the successor to the ‘Molecular and Chip Diagnostics’ Working Group founded in 2002 by Paul Cullen, Harald Funke, Hanns-Georg Klein, Thomas Langmann, and Michael Neumaier.

The Working Group emerged from the growing need of the DGKL and its organs to technically accompany the development of highly parallelized and automated measurement methods for nucleic acids (DNA and RNA chips), while always keeping in mind implications for medical diagnostics, the healthcare system, legislation, and medical ethics. In its founding year, the Working Group held its first conference with about 80 participants, at that time still at Schloss Elmau. In 2004, this conference, now valued as a ‘brainstorming’ event, was moved to the Academy in Tutzing, where it has been held annually from Thursday to Friday before the Pentecost holidays.

Organizationally, the various Working Groups of the DGKL were consolidated into sections from 2012. The Chip and Molecular Diagnostics Working Group renamed itself to the Genomics Working Group, which was then assigned to the Molecular Diagnostics Section (led by Prof. Dr. Daniel Teupser) along with the Bioinformatics, Proteomics, and Biobanking Working Groups. Since then, the conference in Tutzing has been organized as the annual meeting of the entire section.

Following the restructuring of section work at the end of 2019, the Working Group was transformed into the section in the competence field ‘Molecular Diagnostics’. The content and thematic proximity to the other three former Working Groups remains, so they continue to hold their joint conference in Tutzing.

In terms of content, the Genomics Section has primarily focused on high-throughput sequencing in medical diagnostics (Next Generation Sequencing) and the analysis of cell-free DNA/RNA (CNAPS) in blood (Liquid Biopsy/Liquid Profiling) in recent years. A special issue in J Lab Med was also dedicated to the CNAPS topic in 2016, with specialist editors Stefan Holdenrieder and Hanns-Georg Klein working closely together.

The section meets on the sidelines of the Tutzing conference and primarily publishes review articles.