Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Mapping own DNA changes scientist's life - CNN.com
So J. Craig Venter has published his own human genome. He used to run the Celera Genomics Group. The CNN story says that when Celera satisfied the Human Genome Project in 2000 (or 2003 according to the project's link, above) what they published was a composite.
I remain confused. What did HGP have?
HGP's site says there are between 20 and 25 thousand genes, but 3 billion base pairs. There is no one human genome, because we're different. And Venter has published 6 billion letters (is he counting each pair twice? That would be like counting each letter in anything twice, once for the ink, and once for the negative space.)
I figure my readership (all one of you) is by definition interested in minutiae, so maybe you can explain the subtleties.
Labels: genetics
I believe he is counting each pair once, but each pair has 2 letters so 3 billion pairs = 6 billion letters but then again I just hang out with ex-Math team uber-wiener-dog types, never was one myself. I may have calculated wrong ;-)
Yes, it is a bit redundant info since A implies T, C implies G.... but... there really are 6 billion nucleotides, so if you wanted to count it that way I suppose it is justifiable.
: Wednesday, September 5, 2007 8:49:00 AM EDTLinks to this post:
