Scientists Read Human Genetic Code
Feb. 11 -- After a decade of work in laboratories around the nation and half a dozen other countries, researchers have finally achieved their goal of reading the human genome.
Scientists announced today that they have the first reading of the human genetic code, a feat some researchers compare to Copernicus determining the Earth revolved around the Sun, or Charles Darwin's formulating the theory of evolution.
In two landmark studies out this week, researchers detail almost the entire human genetic code.
The announcement marks the next major step in the project since scientists finished decoding the human genome last June. The decoding involved identifying and placing in order the 3.1 billion-unit long sequence that make up human DNA; the new work determines what the code says.
And the researchers say it's a lot simpler than they thought.
They had expected about 100,000 genes per person. Instead, they found about 30,000 — only twice as many as a fly has, and 10,000 more than a worm.
"That comes as a bit of a shock," said Dr. Craig Venter, who heads the Maryland-based Celera Genomics Corp.
"When you consider that other organisms that we know a lot about, like yeast and worms and flies and plants, have gene counts in some instances very close to that," he said.
Celera competed with the publicly-funded Human Genome Project to read the code.
Ready to Revolutionize Medicine
"It will fundamentally change medicine," Venter said. "It will give you power over your own life, instead of just randomly waiting for symptoms to appear — by the time they appear it's probably too late."
Scientists hope the genome work will help them find disease-promoting genes, develop better drugs, tailor therapies to particular patients, evaluate environmental hazards and study human evolution and migration.
The genome is the instruction book for the human species.
Almost every cell of your body contains coiled-up DNA — the famous twisting ladder of genetic instructions that is three billion rungs long.
