HUMAN GENOME PROJECT

                        As the recombinant DNA, gene cloning and DNA sequencing technologies improved in the 1970s and early 1980s the scientists because more and more bold and ambitious and they began to think about the possibility of sequencing the entire human genome which is about 3x10⁹nucleotide pairs at an estimated cost of $ 3 billion. this gave birth to the Human Genome Project in 1990 with Dr. James, D. Watson as its first director.
                    As of now, the completed nucleotide sequences of the geneomes of 599 viruses, nucleotide  viroids, 205 plasmids, 185 organelles viz. chloroplast and mitochondria, 32 true bacteria, 7 archaea, a fungus, plant, a worm and a fly have already been determined. Incidentally, in 1995, the entire genome sequence of the first bacterium. Haemophilus influenza was reported. This project stimulated similar mapping and sequencing projects on the genomes of several other organisms viz. E-coli (bacterium), S. cerevisiae (yeast), D. melanogaster (fruitfly), A. thaliana (a plant) and C. elegans (a worm).

                          The Human Genome Project, a giant leap in the field of genomics was also a very formidable task. soon, the scientists realised the enormity of this task, which involved mapping of at least 1,00,000 genes and sequencing an estimated 3 billion nucleotide pairs. This necessitated a coordinated as well as an international effort and hence International Human Genome Organization (HGO) was established. this involves an international publically funded consortium of scientists at Universities and research institutions with 20 large sequencing centres in six countries like USA, Germany, France, Japan, England and Switzerland with China joining later, plus a number of other labs working on small projects.

                           Initially, the project envisaged (i) to map all human genes (ii) to construct a physical map of the entire human genome, and (iii) to determine the nucleotide sequence of all the 24 human chromosomes. But, soon the project became very ambitious with the competition hotting up every day.

                    Dr. Craig Venter, who is often considered to be synonymous with this project, because of his enormous contribution to this field, set up an institute, The Genomic Research (TIGR) in  Rockville, Maryland. He later (1998) teamed up with Perkin Elmer Inc. of Norwalk, Connecticut, to form a new private company, Cellera Genomics for funding and commercial exploitation of this research. Venter stunned the genomics community by announcing the sequencing of human genome in just 3 years! His proposal was based on 

two key developments: