Publication
Finishing the sequence
The partners in the HGP committed themselves to producing a resource that will stand the test of time. The 'finished' sequence, announced in 2003 and published in 2004, has an estimated error rate of less than one per 100,000 bases of code - tenfold better than the original goal. The new analysis suggested that there are perhaps only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes in our human genome.
Because of the policy of the Human Genome Project of releasing sequence data as it is produced, many studies have already been helped to understand disease genes in humans. The finished sequence will continue to assist researchers to identify small differences between individuals and sections of the DNA involved in regulating gene activity.
This sequence is a tool, a starting point to enable researchers to pursue new avenues and make new discoveries. This is because just knowing the sequence of a gene does not really tell us what it does or how it works. Scientists need to study lots of genes, both in humans and in other organisms, to find out how and why they behave in the way they do.
