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Details of the achievement
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Following are details of the achievement, a decade-long endeavour by scientists in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and China to decipher the genetic instructions that make us who we are:
-- The genome is the complete list of coded instructionsneeded to make a person;
-- There are 3.1 billion letters in the DNA code in everyone of the 100 trillion cells in the human body;
-- The four nitrogenous bases of the DNA alphabet, represented by the letters A, C, G and T and arranged in pairs,carry the instructions for making all organisms. Each block ofthree letters corresponds to a single amino acid;
-- There are 20 different building blocks (amino acids) usedin an array of combinations to produce proteins as different askeratin in hair and haemoglobin in blood;
-- Humans have far fewer genes than expected at 30,000 to 40,000, compared to the nematode worm with 18,000 and the fruitfly with 13,000;
-- The difference between humans and fruitflies or worms is that human genes work differently and we have more controlgenes;
-- Hundreds of genes appear to have come from bacteria --one of which is a major pathway for depression;
-- Most mutations occur in males;
-- Scientists are beginning to discover the purpose of the 97 per cent of DNA that does not encode instructions for making proteins. They suspect the so-called "junk DNA" may help to move genes around;
-- There are six feet of DNA in each of our cells packed into a structure only 0.0004 inches across.
-- If all of the DNA in the human body were put end to end, it would reach to the sun and back more than 600 times;
-- The information would fill a stack of paperback books 200 feet (60 metres) high, or 200 500-page telephone directories;
-- Between humans, DNA differs by only 0.2 per cent, or 1 in 500 bases (letters).
(SD-Agencies)
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