Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project (HGP) was one of the great feats of exploration in history an inward voyage of discovery rather than an outward exploration of the planet or the cosmos; an international research effort to sequence and map all of the genes together known as the genome of members of our species, Homo sapiens.
The HGP was the international, collaborative research program whose goal was the complete mapping and understanding of all the genes of human beings. All our genes together are known as our genome.
The HGP was the natural culmination of the history of genetics research. The hereditary material of all multi-cellular organisms is the famous double helix of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which contains all our genes. DNA, in turn, is made up of four chemical bases, pairs of which form the "rungs" of the twisted, ladder-shaped DNA molecules. All genes are made up of stretches of these four bases, arranged in different ways and lengths. HGP researchers have deciphered the human genome in three major ways: determining the order, or sequence of all the bases in our genome's DNA; making maps that show the locations of genes for major sections of all our chromosomes; and producing what are called linkage maps, complex versions of the type originated in early Drosophila research, though which inherited traits such as those for genetic disorder can be tracked over generations.
The HGP has revealed that there are probably about 20,500 human genes. The completed human sequence can now identify their locations. The ultimate product of the HGP has given the world a resource detailed information about the structure, organization and function of the complete set of human genes. The tools created through the HGP also continue to inform efforts to characterize the entire genomes of several other organisms used extensively in biological research, such as mice, fruit flies and flatworms.
These ambitious goals required and will continue to demand a variety of new technologies that have made it possible to relatively rapidly construct a first draft of the human genome and to continue to refine the draft. These techniques include DNA sequencing, Yeast Artificial Chromosomes (YAC), Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes (BAC), the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and electrophoresis.