Tuesday, 25 March 2014

Human Genome?? :O Lets get some secrets revealed !

Human Genome?? :O Lets get some secrets revealed !!

    The Human Genome Project (HGP) was one of the great feats of exploration in history - an inward voyage of discovery rather than an outward exploration of the planet or the cosmos; an international research effort to sequence and map all of the genes - together known as the genome - of members of our species, Homo sapiens. Completed in April 2003, the HGP gave us the ability, for the first time, to read nature's complete genetic blueprint for building a human being. 

    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. All our genes together are known as our "genome." The hereditary material of all multi-cellular organisms is the famous double helix of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which contains all of our genes. DNA, in turn, is made up of four chemical bases, pairs of which form the "rungs" of the twisted, ladder-shaped DNA molecules. All genes are made up of stretches of these four bases, arranged in different ways and in different lengths. HGP researchers have deciphered 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, complex 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 probably about 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 basic set of inheritable "instructions" for the development and function of a human being.


    The Human Genome Project (HGP) is an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up human DNA, and of identifying and mapping all of the genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional standpoint. It remains the world's largest collaborative biological project. The Human Genome Project originally aimed to map the nucleotides contained in a human haploid reference genome (more than three billion). Several groups have announced efforts to extend this to diploid human genomes including the International HapMap Project, Applied Biosystems, Perlegen, Illumina, J. Craig Venter Institute, Personal Genome Project, and Roche-454.

   
The "genome" of any given individual is unique; mapping "the human genome" involves sequencing multiple variations of each gene. The project did not study the entire DNA found in human cells; some heterochromatic areas (about 8% of the total genome) remain unsequenced. The availability of advance genotyping chips, containing sets of large number of SNPs provides good coverage of the human genome, can be used for thousands of cases and control studies for exploring the basis of complex traits.






Related News About Human Genome Project
“A Decade Later, Genetic Map Yields Few New Cures,” said a New York Times headlinein June 2010. The cost of sequencing a human genome had fallen from about $100 million in 2001 to $30,000 when the article was written; today it can be done for nearly $1,000.  And the promise is coming true.
Hardly a week goes without the announcement of a major scientific breakthrough in genomics.  The March 6 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine detailed how human cells can be genetically engineered to make them resistant to the virus that causes AIDS.  A week earlier the journal published a finding that analyzing fetal DNA in a pregnant woman’s blood was a more accurate — and less intrusive — way of screening for Down syndrome and other chromosomal disorders than methods such as ultrasound imaging and blood tests.
Genome analysis is already being used to guide the treatment of cancers of the brain and the breast.  Eric Green, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, explains that cancer is essentially a genomic disease: “Instead of classifying cancers by the tissue where they are first detected — colon, breast or brain, doctors are beginning to categorize cancer by its genomic characteristics and select treatments based on the signature of different mutations.  This approach promises to treat patients with the most effective medicines while minimizing undesirable side effects, especially when chemotherapy is unlikely to help.”
  And thats really great isnt'it?? :D

   The early triumphs are being seen with rare inherited diseases—which together afflict more than 25 million Americans.  Genomic strategies, driven by the plummeting cost of genome sequencing, have led to the identification of the genomic defects for more than 5,000 of the inherited diseases caused by mutations in a protein-encoding gene.  An intense four-year, more than $400 million, research program, the Centers for Mendelian Genomics, is working to find the genomic cause of the remaining 2,000–4,000 rare genetic diseases.


Now, lets get some picture tour ;) -->






Picture speaks a thousand words!!! Agree?? Appreciate your genome, appreciate the miracle of your life. <3

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