Human Genome Project- A Mystery Revealed
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| The Vitruvian Man official logo of The Human Genome Project |
Human the
most dominant species on the planet the one who’s been living and dwelling on
this earth for hundreds of thousands of years, continuously reshaping the
world, efforts being made to bend the reality according to human desires,
continuous efforts being made resulting in to evolution and consistence
improvement in the life of a normal human. Moving beyond, with the passage of
time and reaching the peak of technological revolution in the 21st century
making life easy and entertaining. All these efforts are made by humans and
ultimately to facilitate the entire humanity and making everyone’s life better.
Even today continuous efforts are being made across all the fields of science
to make human life even better. Besides this entire scientific world went
curious about the origin of humans and their ability to evolve, how the humans
initially survived in the world, how the human body operates, what governs all
the function inside a human body, who commands all the changes inside the body,
how a certain environmental phenomenon effects the human and how does a human
get acclimatize according to these changes. Possible answers to all of these
questions were hidden inside the genetic material ‘the genome’ of human. This
curiosity force the scientific world to devise such a project which focuses on
studying the entire sequence of human Genome, which ultimately can help in
tracking down all the possible genes operating the human body, which ultimately
helps in understanding the human body and its functioning in a better way. All
this lead to the foundation of “The Human Genome Project”.
The Human Genome Project (HGP):
The human
genome project was an idea put forward by the U.S scientists later approved by
the government in 1984, this idea was later adopted by other countries including
China, U.K., France, Japan and Germany and they all joined their forces to
complete this project. The human genome project began in 1990, in consortium
member countries with research being conducted in various research centres of
the consortium members. The most prominent research centres included:
1.The
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, U. K.
2.The
Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research, U.S.
3.RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center, Yokohama, Japan.
4.Beijing Genomics Institute Chinese Academy of
Sciences, Beijing, China.
5.Stanford Genome Technology Center, U.S.
6.Cold Spring
Harbor Laboratory, U.S.
7.Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Germany.
8.German Research Centre for Biotechnology,
Germany.
9.Genoscope and CNRS, France.
Along with
these many other institutes from the member countries were also a part of this
mega project. Some of the key aims of this project were to sequence the entire
human genome of human to know its entire nucleotide sequence, to track down the
genes present in human DNA, to quantify the amount of coding and non-coding
region in the human DNA, to understand the genetic basis of various diseases,
especially the hereditary diseases and to identify the genes responsible for
them, to predict and understand interaction in between different genes, to
store all the genetic information for long term usage and to address various
legal, ethical issues. The human genome was sequenced using Sanger method of
sequencing. For this purpose the human genome was lysed in to large pieces of
200000-400000 nucleotide pieces, each sequence was later cloned/amplified and
further digested in to 4000-6000 base pair pieces. Then each segment was sequenced,
PCR was conducted special type of ddNTP’s were added in to the mixture terminating
sequences at different points later these sequences were aligned via various
computer stimulations, for preparing a proper sequence. The project was
completed in 2000 and its first draft was issued in the same year. Later a more
accurate and the final draft of the whole human genome was published in 2003.
Facts and Figures of the HGP:
Key facts
of the human genome project are:
- Proposed in 1984, began in 1990 and completed in 2003.
- A total funding of $3 billion
- Joint effort of more than 20 research institutes spread across 6 countries.
- A total of 3 billion bases in human haploid DNA.
- Total 22300 genes present in human.
- About 2-2.5% of the human DNA is functional; the rest is junk DNA whose function is unknown yet.
- The human genome has a staggering total size of 3.2 GB.
- Further enhanced the importance of whole genome sequencing and lead a strong foundation for genome sequencing of other eukaryotic and particularly vertebrate living organisms.
Conclusions:
The
HGP is of great importance and an essential element required for the evolution
of the field of genetics and molecular biology. Many new sequencing methods
were discovered after this project, knowing the fact that sanger sequencing is
highly time consuming specially for larger DNA’s, today many small portable sequencers are
easily available thanks to the efforts made by scientific community. This
project also leads to the foundation of “The era of OMICS”, as it explained the
importance of studying biological molecules as a whole and allowing us to see a
bigger picture, a panoramic view of how these molecules work, how the interact
with each other, how the interact with their environment, and what impact does
the environment has on the functioning, interaction and structure of these
molecules. This project very much triggered the era of OMICS research, and this
is playing a key role in enhancing our ability to understand life in a much
better way. 
