Human Genome Project
...Man has had this ability through natural selection for some time without knowing it, but in the near future scientist will be able to speed the process of natural selection by changing a persons genes. Scientists have identified what constitutes human DNA located in the nucleus of a cell. The Human Genome Project was established to identify the genes that make us who we are and is now an international organization. The massive task of identifying the numerous gene combinations has created a problem. In the nucleus are 22 genomes, plus two sex chromosomes which have already been identified. In the 22 genomes there are approximately 3 billion base pairs of DNA, which contain 50,000 to 100,000 genes, a basic unit of heredity. The identification of these base pairs is the goal of the Human Genome Project, which started in 1990 and whose job it is to identify the letters or chromosomes in DNA. These letters represent nucleotides called adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine (or A, C, T, G). ('92 BSCS pg. 1)
The Human Genome Project idea originated in the mid 1980's and was discussed in the scientific community and media through the latter part of that decade. In the United States the
combined effort of the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Health were involved in the project planning. (The National Center For Genetic Research) The Human Genome Project has several goals including identifying the genes of a human assessing the genes and comparing human DNA to that of bacteria, yeasts, the fruit fly, mice, and the Arabidopis thaliana, a small genome plant that grows rapidly. A major purpose is to determine how evolution proceeds from lower organisms to humans, and discover why the smaller genomes of animals have less junk or unneeded DNA. Geneticists use two types of maps to characterize the genes they discover--a genetic linkage map...
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