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----------------------------------------------------------------------- Gene mapping project halfway done ----------------------------------------------------------------------- WASHINGTON (October 25, 1997 00:46 a.m. EDT http://www.nando.net) - The Human Genome Project, assigned to identify every single gene in the human body, is halfway through its time and has glanced at nearly half the genes there, researchers reported on Friday. But they said they did not have nearly enough detail about the genes and would either need to find a way to work faster, or would need more time. "The large-scale sequencing of the 3 billion base pairs of the human genome has barely begun," Lee Rowan and colleagues at the University of Seattle in Washington wrote in a report in the journal Science. They said they had analyzed only about 60 million of the base pairs -- the twinned molecules that make up DNA. There are four bases in DNA and the order in which they link up provides the code that makes up the genes. Each gene has a differing number of base pairs and they said they had partial information on about 40,000 to 50,000 genes. The human genome, or collection of genes, is estimated to contain between 70,000 and 100,000 genes. The researchers estimated only about two percent of all human genes had been sequenced, or mapped and decoded. "If the genome is to be sequenced on time and within budget, sequencing must become significantly faster and cheaper," they wrote. Nonetheless, they said their findings had already had a huge impact. The network of researchers around the world who were contributing to the project had also completely sequenced all the genes in the E. coli bacterium, yeast, and 11 microbes. "Those of the worm, fruit fly, mouse and human have been partially sequenced," they wrote. "These sequences have dramatically altered the practice of genetics, molecular biology, developmental biology, immunology and microbiology," they added. "The explosion of data produced by the Human Genome Project has called forth the creation of a new discipline -- bioinformatics, whose focus is on the acquisition, storage, analysis, modeling and distribution of the many types of information embedded in DNA and protein sequence data." Copyright 1997 Nando.net Copyright 1997 Reuters <http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/health/102597/health30_828_noframes.html> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- janet paterson - 50/9 - sinemet/selegiline/prozac - [log in to unmask]