The department of biotechnology (dbt) is planning to promote research in correcting genetic disorders. Scientists will now be encouraged to produce proteins, vaccines and genes for treating hereditary disorders, stated renowned biotechnologist V K Vinayak, a dbt official, at a meet of Indian physiologists in New Delhi recently.

Vinayak claimed that biotechnology would offer antenatal diagnostic tools for identifying defective foetuses prone to diseases like thalassaemia. Even the 2 per cent of the human genome mapped so far could cure 4,000 genetic disorders. Probable genetic deformities can be corrected even in the womb.