Introduction to Clinical Applications of Biomolecules in Disease Diagnosis

Early disease diagnosis has an important role in the prognosis and treatment of acute as well as chronic diseases. The identification and quantification of clinically important biomolecules such as enzymes, proteins, nucleic acids, antibodies, and hormones are developed as diagnostics tools and are necessary to find out the condition of the body’s physiological and biological functions. Proteins have a large number of biological functions especially they act as biological catalysts, i.e., enzymes. Hormones and enzymes are responsible for many complex reactions and regulate the entire metabolism directly or indirectly. Thus, they are involved in the degradation and synthesis of biomolecules, nutrients, etc. Molecular diagnostics has transformed tremendously the clinical diagnosis and treatment of many diseases. It utilizes advanced molecular technologies which concentrate on the detection of pathogenic organisms at the genome level and led to the development of genomics. The structural and functional genomics approaches involved the exploration of disease-related genes and the identification of their structural alterations. Diagnostic applications of structural genomics are to find out genetic alterations and to prepare a database of disease-causing genes whereas functional genomics explores the expression genetics which utilizes PCR-based technologies, next-generation sequencing with bioinformatics, and computational biology. The quantification of these clinically important biomolecules assists in knowing the type of damaged tissues and the extent of damage and finally helps to monitor the course of the disease which can also be used as a therapeutic.