Talk:Human Genome Project

Latest comment: 1 month ago by Gah4 in topic Mapping vs. sequencing

Dates? edit

The dates are mostly wrong, right?

could you be more specific? Courtland 00:34, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)
how can it have started in 1990, expected to have taken 15 years, finished in 2000 and be only two years early?

The '15 years' had been predicted in 1987, and so was perfectly accurate.


2003 was the publication of the "golden" publication, which was clean of many of the errors present in the draft sequence (their standard was 1 error/ 10,000 bases). Thus, when the project was slated to be done in 2005, the final publishment of the sequence was in 2003, hence the two years ahead of their goal. Here, I found support, http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/timeline.shtml. If you look under 1987, a 15-year program is suggested, but undr 1990, it states that the 15-year project formally begins.

Controversy edit

Surely a lot has controversy has occured because of the HGP, there should a specific mention to the problems and protest that it has caused. Ghingo

april 2007: yes there has been a lot of contraversy about this, thanks for bringing that up Ghingo. One set of scholars that springs to mind is Leota Long Dog, who is the author of the 1999 article "whose genes are they" in the Journal of health and social policy, 10.4: 51-66. Among other problematic ethical issues she brings up, she mainly lauds the program as an extension of years of colonization. except now, in our micro-management society, we stay at the level of genes to make racism more palatable. --Lina

January 2016: The article by Leota Lone Dog criticizes the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), which is not the same thing as the Human Genome Project. The HGDP specifically sampled individuals from historically isolated ethnic groups. --Olle

From the start of the Human Genome Project, there was discussion of the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues and some money was put into studying them. That is, to get ahead of any controversy. As well as I know, the biggest controversy had to do with it being a waste of money. Gah4 (talk) 20:44, 7 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

On the contrary edit

Rolling circle was not an essential innovation for the creation of a human genome sequence. I would recommend reading the source literature. The " Hierarchical shotgun sequencing" and "Technology for large-scale sequencing" section of the paper describing the public project's <a href=http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v409/n6822/full/409860a0.html>draft</a> explicitly cites the critical techniques employed by ALL the large, public genome centers. Rolling circle amplification is not among them.

Further descriptions of the technologies required for a high-throughput genome center can be found <a href=http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/full/10/8/1081>here</a> and <a href=http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/full/10/9/1288>here</a>. Again, rolling circle is not among the essential technologies.

I would recommend removing it.


wrong place edit

this part is in the worg place, it disrupted my reading down the page. and is mostly irrelivant to the section.

James D. Watson was Head of the National Center for Human Genome Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States starting from 1988. Largely due to his disagreement with his boss, Bernadine Healy, over the issue of patenting genes, he was forced to resign in 1992. He was replaced by Francis Collins in April 1993, and the name of the Center was changed to the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in 1997.

Mapping vs. sequencing edit

There is a recent revert related to the date and predictions for date for mapping the genome. Much of the article confuses, or at least doesn't make so obvious the difference, between mapping and sequencing. At the beginning, it was expected to map the genome first. That is, generate clones, that is, actual pieces of DNA along with their position in the genome, and then sequence them. Much of the ability to finish the genome depended on advances in computing, and some of those advances allowed for whole genome shotgun sequencing at the gigabase scale. That wasn't considered from the beginning. The result of doing shotgun sequencing meant that mapping first wasn't needed. In the end, that sped things up, though also made the result more confusing. Before we get into dates, though, the article needs to separate mapping and sequencing. Gah4 (talk) 00:13, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply