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Human genome sequence completed

Originally posted by: vi_edit
I thought they did this like a year and a half ago?
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no they were in the process of it... its now complete.. 2 years earlier than expected... i find this pretty mindblowing
 
Won't be long before spammers start sending out offers to alter your DNA to extend the length of....certain male appendage.
 
Originally posted by: vi_edit
I thought they did this like a year and a half ago?
Click to expand...

I guess this is what you (and I) heard about:

Less than three years after finishing the working draft of the three billion letters that make up human DNA and two years earlier than expected, an international consortium of scientists said on Monday the set of instructions on how humans develop and function is done.
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Originally posted by: silverpig
Originally posted by: vi_edit
I thought they did this like a year and a half ago?
Click to expand...

I guess this is what you (and I) heard about:

Less than three years after finishing the working draft of the three billion letters that make up human DNA and two years earlier than expected, an international consortium of scientists said on Monday the set of instructions on how humans develop and function is done.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought this was completed a couple years ago.
 
Originally posted by: brtspears2
When they say scientists, does the story imply the scientists worked for a commercial lab or gov't lab?
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All the above. IIRC, it was much like a distributed computing project where several labs worked in parallel to get it done. The "Main" lab is somewhere in the southwest I believe...near Las Vegas.
 
While that's ultimately cool & great progress, it's analogous to having a parts list to a 747 jet & no assembly diagram...

Yet...
 
Originally posted by: vi_edit
I thought they did this like a year and a half ago?
Click to expand...
As the article states, that was a preliminary or rough draft sequencing.

It was a fairly interesting political story, at least when it comes to science. A commercial company was trying to upstage the collaborative scientific community by beating them to publishing of a draft sequencing. One of the non-commercial scientists worked like a madman to develop open-source based software to keep the greater scientific community from falling behind. I believe his efforts ultimately succeeded (can't recall who "went to press" first but it was essentially simultaneous); I don't have the relevant magazine article handy at the moment.
 
This has been done before. IIRC, a commercial lab was the first to finish this project because they had massive funding and better equipment. They announced their sequencing was completed awhile ago, but their results will not be made public. This sequencing announcement is from the public consortium doing it...
 
Originally posted by: exp
Amazing stuff. Now to figure out what all those genes do...
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exactly. although finishing the sequence is definitely a milestone, the vast majority of the work is yet to come.
 
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