Genome sequencing
Why in News?
- Scientists from the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium, an international collaboration of around 30 institutions, reported the most complete sequencing of the human genome until now.
What is a gene?
- The gene is the basic physical unit of inheritance.
- Genes are passed from parents to offspring and contain the information needed to specify traits. Genes are arranged, one after another, on structures called chromosomes.
- A chromosome contains a single, long DNA molecule, only a portion of which corresponds to a single gene. Humans have approximately 20,500 genes arranged on their chromosomes.
What is a genome?
- A genome is the complete set of genetic information in an organism. It provides all of the information the organism requires to function. In living organisms, the genome is stored in long molecules of DNA called chromosomes.
Significance of a complete sequence
- The Human Genome Project that began in 1990 gave the first results of the complete human genome sequence in 2003. For the first time, scientists were able to read the blueprint of human life.
- However, though it was announced as the complete human genome, about 15% of it was incomplete. Due to limitations of technology, scientists were not able to piece together some repetitive parts of the human genome.
- Solving some of the problems, an updated version was released in 2013, which still missed out on 8% of the genome.
- Now, the researchers have nearly completed the job, adding 200 million base pairs and 115 new protein-coding genes to the list.
Uses of a complete sequence
- One of the most important uses of this release will be that it forms a standard for comparison in future sequencing attempts
To read about uses of genome sequencing and Genome India Project- https://officerspulse.com/genome-sequencing-lab/
Referencing
- https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/explained-do-the-new-findings-on-genome-sequencing-provide-a-better-understanding-of-the-human-body/article35658996.ece
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