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Fact # 4) How Many Genes do we Have (Really)?

• Is that a great question, or what? When I was finishing up my draft chapters for the first edition of the Dragonfly book (towards the end of the year 2000) I wrote down an estimate of 100,000 genes. That's what most scientists thought the human genome project would reveal. I was wrong . . . well, maybe I was wrong!

• The first detailed annotation of the sequence to be published (in February 2001) suggested that we might have as few as 30,000 genes ("a worm and a half" in the words of one scientist who noted that a mere worm had more than 20,000 genes). This surprised quite a few people who had expected many more genes, myself included . . . I grabbed the galleys of the book and quickly changed the estimates to range as low as 40,000.

Arabadopsis thaliana
25,498 genes

Dsosophila melanogaster
13,601 genes

Click Here to Access a NATURE paper from February 2001 on the "Low" number of genes in the human genome sequence.

In the Fall of 2001, however, scientists completed a comparison of the number of genes found in several students of the human genome, and came to a slightly different conclusion. Most of the genes noted in the sequence done by the Celera Corporation were different from the genes noted by the public sequencing project. What this meant, according to an article in the September 15, 2001 issue of The Scientist, was that we might actually have twice as many genes as either study had suggested. Perhaps 75,000 - 80,000 (or more).

In short: Hold the phone. We might have enough genes to brag about after all!

For More Information, visit the ORNL Genome Information Site:

http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/project/journals/insights.html

 

The Human Genome Top Ten: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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(A web site developed by Ken Miller and Joe Levine to provide scientific and education support for teachers and students using our textbooks)