The Human Genome Project

In this week's AP Psychology class, one of the topics we discussed were the contributions of nature and nature towards the development of a human being. One of the terms that was involved in the chapter was the shared human genome, or the complete instructions for making an organism, consisting of all the genetic material in that organism's chromosomes. Human genome researchers have discovered the common sequence within human DNA. It is this shared genetic profile that makes us humans, rather than chimpanzees or tulips. So, I decided to research this further, and found a project existed to understand the genes of all human beings! And, I decided to share an overview with you all. Happy daisies!

The Human Genome Project (HGP) was the international, collaborative research program whose goal was the complete mapping and understanding of all the genes of human beings. As mentioned before, all our genes together are known as our "genome."


The HGP was the pinnacle of the history of genetics research. In 1911, Alfred Sturtevant, then an undergraduate researcher in the laboratory of Thomas Hunt Morgan, realized that he could - and had to, in order to organize his data - map the locations of the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) genes whose mutations the Morgan laboratory was tracking over generations.

The hereditary material of all multi-cellular organisms is the famous double helix of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which includes all of our genes. DNA, in turn, is composed of four chemical bases, pairs of which construct the "rungs" of the twisted, ladder-shaped DNA molecules. All genes are made up of stretches of these four bases, ordered in different ways and in varying lengths. HGP researchers have decoded the human genome in three major ways: determining the order, or "sequence," of all the bases in our genome's DNA; making maps that show the locations of genes for major sections of all our chromosomes; and producing what are called linkage maps, intricate versions of the type originated in early Drosophila research, through which inherited traits (such as those for genetic disease) can be tracked over generations.


The HGP has revealed that there are approximately 20,500 human genes. The completed human sequence can now identify their locations. This ultimate product of the HGP has given the world a resource of detailed information about the structure, organization and function of the complete set of human genes. This information can be thought of as the fundamental set of inheritable "instructions" for the development and function of a human being.


The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium published the first draft of the human genome in the journal Nature in February 2001 with the sequence of the entire genome's three billion base pairs about 90 percent complete. An astonishing discovery of this first draft was that the number of human genes appeared to be significantly fewer than previous estimates, which ranged from 50,000 genes to as many as 140,000.The full sequence was completed and published in April 2003.

The tools created through the HGP also continue to educate efforts to characterize the entire genomes of several other organisms used exhaustively in biological research, such as mice, fruit flies and flatworms. These efforts support each other, because most organisms have many similar, or "homologous," genes with similar functions. Therefore, the identification of the sequence or function of a gene in a model organism, for example, the roundworm C. elegans, has the potential to explain a homologous gene in human beings, or in one of the other model organisms. These goals required and will continue to demand new technologies that have made it possible to swiftly construct a first draft of the human genome and to continue to refine that draft.

Source: http://www.genome.gov/12011238