What Is The Human Genome Project?

Question

I have no idea what it is so please help. In really simple terms for some one not intelligent (ie me) to understand. 10 points for the most useful and simple answer. But can it be quite long as well THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Answer 1

Completed in 2003, the Human Genome Project (HGP) was a 13-year project coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. During the early years of the HGP, the Wellcome Trust (U.K.) became a major partner; additional contributions came from Japan, France, Germany, China, and others. See our history page for more information.

Project goals were to

identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA,
determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA,
store this information in databases,
improve tools for data analysis,
transfer related technologies to the private sector, and
address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project.
Though the HGP is finished, analyses of the data will continue for many years. Follow this ongoing research on our Progress page. An important feature of the HGP project was the federal government's long-standing dedication to the transfer of technology to the private sector. By licensing technologies to private companies and awarding grants for innovative research, the project catalyzed the multibillion-dollar U.S. biotechnology industry and fostered the development of new medical applications.

Answer 2

the human genome project is very simple. IT is about knowing all the sequence of the nitrogenous bases in DNA. Of course, some of these nitrogenous bases change (that is why we are different from each other) but the project focuses on the ones that are common and true for every human. The importance of this comes when scientists want to cure diseases originated by genes, mismatched pairs, etc. So, if a disease is inherited, they can go to the human genome, compare it and see the difference, and probably...create a cure. Also, it is very useful to see how our body works. Less dan 2% of the genes code for proteins..but there are more proteins than the 2% can give us...this means that most of the proteins are changed after being translated from DNA. etc

Answer 3

Completed in 2003, the Human Genome Project (HGP) was a 13-year project coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. During the early years of the HGP, the Wellcome Trust (U.K.) became a major partner; additional contributions came from Japan, France, Germany, China, and others. See our history page for more information.

Project goals were to

identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA,
determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA,
store this information in databases,
improve tools for data analysis,
transfer related technologies to the private sector, and
address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project.

Answer 4

Very Simple Answer : A project to understand human DNA
Simple Answer : A project to map out the entire length of the human DNA sequence to better understand how our bodies work, our evolution and the potential for genetically inherited diseases.

Answer 5

the website address should give you all you need to know in fairly simple language. http://www.genome.gov/HGP/
It was simply a project to crack the genetic blue print ( IE the make up of human cells and thus human kind )so they could know how to reproduce and fix or that was the hope to use it to improve many of the conditions that we currently cannot fix.
This is of course a very basic description of it and more detail can be found at the above website.

Answer 6

The bad point is they could have spent the money in preventative measures such as better diet, exercise, getting people to regularly go to natural therapists to have their bodies balanced and working 100% to avoid the slow decline to disease. More importantly they only found about 30,000 genes and they expected to find 130,000 genes - it just proved that their theories on how the body works were way off - so instead, use what works like Chinese medicine, chiropractic, massage, naturopathy etc etc

Answer 7

Human Genome Project:
also called Human Genome Initiative scientific research effort to analyze the DNA of humans and of several lower organisms. The project began in the United States in 1990 under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. Projects undertaken concurrently in Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Russia are coordinated with the American effort through the Human Genome Organization. The project's ultimate goal is to identify the chromosomal location of every human gene and to determine each gene's precise chemical structure in order to elucidate its function in health and disease. The information gathered is expected to serve as the basic reference for research in human biology and medicine in the 21st century and to provide fundamental insights into the genetic basis of human disease. The new technologies developed in the course of the project will be applicable in numerous other fields of biomedical endeavour.

Every cell of an organism has a set of chromosomes containing the heritable genetic material that directs its development—i.e., its genome. The genetic material of chromosomes is DNA. Each of the paired strands of the DNA molecule is a linear array of subunits called nucleotides, or bases, of which there are four types—adenine, cytosine, thymine, and guanine. Genes are discrete stretches of nucleotides that carry the information the cell uses to construct proteins. Human genes take up only about 5 to 10 percent of the DNA; some of the remaining DNA, which does not code for proteins, may regulate whether or not proteins are made, but the function of most of it is unknown. In June 2000 the Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics, a privately owned firm founded in 1998, jointly announced the completion of the initial sequencing of the human genome, which is composed of about three billion nucleotide base pairs. This landmark of scientific achievement represented the completion of the first stage of the project. Initial results published by both groups in February 2001 declared that the human genome actually contains only about 30,000 to 40,000 genes, much fewer than originally thought.

Two types of maps were constructed: genetic linkage maps and physical maps. A genetic linkage map provides the relative location of genes and other markers on the basis of how frequently genes are inherited together; the closer genes are to each other on a chromosome, the more likely they are to be inherited together. Physical maps locate genes in relation to the presence of known nucleotide sequences that act as landmarks along the length of a chromosome. One such “marker” used to map the human genome is a sequence-tagged site, a short sequence of nucleotides that occurs only once throughout the genome. A relatively detailed physical map was needed before sequencing could begin. Sequencing, in which the precise order of the nucleotide sequence is determined, was the most technically challenging part of the project.

DNA sequencing of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae was completed in 1996, the bacterium Escherichia coli in 1997, the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) and the plant Arabidopsis thaliana in 2000, and the laboratory mouse (Mus musculus) and the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus in 2001. The rationale for these efforts is that many genes with similar functions in disparate organisms have been conserved in evolution and show surprising similarities. Genes from simpler organisms can thus be used to study their counterparts found in human beings.

Another objective of the Human Genome Project is to address the ethical, legal, and social implications of the information obtained. Society will derive the greatest benefit from this knowledge only if it takes measures to prevent abuses, such as invasions of the privacy of an individual's genetic background by employers, insurers, or government agencies or discrimination based on genetic grounds.

Answer 8

Its a project to map out the entire sequence of proteins in human DNA

Answer 9

All About The Human Genome Project (HGP):

http://www.genome.gov/HGP/

It has everything and then some about HGP!

Answer 10

i think it's somethingto do with a company monitoring the growth/reproduction/characteristics of a load of peole that are currently alive, to see how they differ depending on environment and lifestyles/genetics, and i think it's taking place over may years.