Essay on Human Genome Project

The human genome can be best described as a set of nucleic acid sequences wherein humans it’s encrypted as DNA. It can be found on the inside of a small DNA molecule situated in each mitochondrion and also within the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes found in the cell nuclei. This genome in humans consists of both the non-coding DNA and the protein-coding DNA genes. There are three billion DNA base pairs in the haploid genome of the human race which are contained in the germ cells. On the other side, the diploid genome consists of six billion DNA content. Interestingly, despite the difference between the DNA content between humans, the difference is much smaller compared to our closest relatives the chimpanzees. The first successful human genome project was published in 2001 with the complete set of human genome sequences. The aim of these studies related to human genome is to create advancements in the fields of medicine, forensics, human evolution among other fields.

            Despite the fact that the human genome sequence has been determined fully by DNA sequencing, the field hasn’t yet been fully exploited. Previous reports claim that almost all biometric activities, for instance, chromosome architecture organization, epigenetic inheritance control signals and the regulation of gene expression are clearly associated with non-coding DNA in the genome. Currently, due to the improved research methods, there are an estimated nineteen – twenty thousand human protein-coding genes. Funny enough, that number represents an estimated 1.5% of the genome the remaining being regulated DNAs, non-coding RNA molecules, introns, LINEs, SINEs and the sequences whose functions have not been identified yet.

[1] Frazer, K. A. 2012. “Decoding the Human Genome,” 1599.

2 Cotton, R. G. H. 2002. ”The Human Genome Project and Genome Variation,” 285.

3 Ibid., 287.

4 Hood, Leroy, and Lee Rowen. 2013. ”The Human Genome Project: Big Science Transforms Biology and Medicine,” 81.

Bibliography

Cotton, R. G. H. 2002. ”The Human Genome Project and Genome Variation.” Internal Medicine Journal 32 (7): 285-295. doi:10.1046/j.1445-5994.2002.00233.x.

Frazer, K. A. 2012. ”Decoding the Human Genome.” Genome Research 22 (9): 1599-1606. doi:10.1101/gr.146175.112.

Hood, Leroy, and Lee Rowen. 2013. ”The Human Genome Project: Big Science Transforms Biology and Medicine.” Genome Medicine 5 (9): 79-83. doi:10.1186/gm483.