Overview

The Human Genome Project is a massive scientific effort to identify all human genes and determine the sequence of the chemical bases (nucleotides) of the entire human genome. The human genome has perhaps 50,000-100,000 genes, which are constructed from about 3 billion base pairs of nucleotides. There are four different nucleotides—adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine—and the arrangement of these four bases in specific sequences acts as a hereditary code. These 3 billion nucleotides are located on DNA molecules within 23 pairs of human chromosomes in the nucleus of cells in the human body. The Human Genome Project began in 1990 and was funded at $200 million per year by the United States National Institute of Health and the Department of Energy. At its inception it was expected to last 15 years and cost $3 billion, making it one of the largest single scientific projects funded by...