The Human Genome Project (HGP), operated from 1990 to 2003, , provided researchers with basic information about the sequences of the three billion chemical base pairs (i.e., adenine [A], thymine [T], guanine [G], and cytosine [C]) that make up human genomic DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Human Genome Project (HGP), an international collaboration that successfully determined, stored, and rendered publicly available the sequences of almost all the genetic content of the chromosomes of the human organism, otherwise known as the human genome.
The HGP was further intended to improve the technologies needed to interpret and analyze genomic sequences, to identify all the genes encoded in human DNA, and to address the ethical, legal, and social implications that might arise from defining the entire human genomic sequence.
To appreciate the magnitude, challenge, and implications of the HGP, it is important first to consider the foundation of science upon which it was based—the fields of classical, molecular, and human genetics. Classical genetics is considered to have begun in the mid-1800s with the work of Austrian botanist, teacher, and Augustinian prelate Gregor Mendel, who defined the basic laws of genetics in his studies of the garden pea (Pisum sativum). Mendel succeeded in explaining that, for any given gene, offspring inherit from each parent one form, or allele, of a gene. In addition, the allele that an offspring inherits from a parent for one gene is independent of the allele inherited from that parent for another gene.
Credit : Human Genome Project Information Archive 1990–2003
Picture Credit : Google