Human Genome:
Scientists had published the map of the human genome for the first time nearly two decades ago which was hailed as a breakthrough.
- In 2003, scientists got the breakthrough, but it was incomplete as about 8% of the human DNA was left unsequenced.
- Now for the first time, a large team has accounted for completing the 8% picture of the human genome.
- In 2020, the Ministry of Science and Technology had approved an ambitious gene-mapping project called the Genome India Project (GIP).
- A genome refers to all of the genetic material in an organism, and the human genome is mostly the same in all people, but a very small part of the DNA does vary between one individual and another.
- Every organism’s genetic code is contained in its Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (DNA), the building blocks of life.
- The discovery that DNA is structured as a “double helix” by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, started the quest for understanding how genes dictate life, its traits, and what causes diseases.
- Each genome contains all of the information needed to build and maintain that organism.
- In humans, a copy of the entire genome contains more than 3 billion DNA base pairs.
