Officially started in 1990, it is an international research effort to map the estimated 30,000 genes in human DNA and to completely sequence the 3 billion chemical base bases that make up these genes. Findings, collected in shared databases, are expected to provide better diagnoses and treatments for a range of human disorders, some of which, like muscular dystrophy and Alzheimer’s disease, can be found in genetic variations in DNA called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNP (pronounced ‘snips’). Another feature of the program is to analyse the DNA of a set of non-human model organisms such as the fruit fly and laboratory mouse to provide comparative information that is essential for understanding how the human genome works. The plan was for all databases to be publicly available by the end of 2005, but that was brought forward to 2003. The organization of the databases (some of which are already available) and the algorithms for making use of the data have led to a new area of study labeled bioinformatics.
See Amino acids, Bioinformatics, Caenorhabditis (C.) elegans (or nematode), DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), Gene, Genome, Genomics, Genetic determinism, Human Connectome Project (HCP), Molecular biology, Nucleic acid, Nucleotide, Polymorphism