Genome Research - Surprises in the HGP

Surprises in the HGP

For the first time in the history of the world, due to the Human Genome Project, an organism has learned it's own recipe. With that knowledge has come many unpredicted discoveries. Foremost amongst these is the low number of genes humans have. Originally estimated to be close to 100,000, it turns out that we have about 30,000, nearly the same number of genes contained in a mustard plant. In addition, many of our genes are shared with other organisms, striking down many long-held assumptions about the biological uniqueness of humans.