Mapping the Human Genome Vision :: Essays Papers

Mapping the gentlemans gentleman Genome Vision-In the past, the discovery of human disease genes has historically been an arduous undertaking. Extensive and exhaustive studies of genetic inheritance and pedigrees in generations of families led to the discovery of the color blindness gene on the Y chromosome in the untimely 1990s. As more biological tools became available, the pace of gene discovery increased. However, much of the biological laboratory practices were still rooted in intensively manual procedures. With the foundation garment of computing power in the mid-1980s, disproportionate amount of resources were being applied to hundreds of individual gene discovery efforts, such as Huntingtons Disease and muscular dystrophy. It was with this recognition that a large-scale effort at mapping the human genome was undertaken and in 1990, the Human Genome Project was deemed possible and launched officially by the National Institute of health (Pollack 1,2).Presently, compu ters are being used to hold the vast databases of all the sequencing tuition for every gene of the human DNA strand. If computers were not available, the paper needed to train all this information would stack higher than the Washington Monument, over 555 feet high. And this would only be for the data, not the analysis of that data. Imagine the nightmare of trying to find the assort gene pair, there are over 3.2 billion of them, in all that paper. But providing a database for the sequencing information of the human genome is only one way in which computers are helping in the mapping of the human genome. They also provide the computational power needed to speed the calculations for each gene as comfortably as producing maps and the such for genetic information on each chromosome (Smith 14). In fact, Compaq Computer Corporation built specific technology enabling completion of the Human Genome. In the future, computing power will become greater and greater allowing for faster calculations and analysis of sequencing data. Also, there will be new robotics, micro-fabrication technologies and laboratory information management systems that will have to be applied to the challenges of the Human Genome Project (Bishop, 137). Furthermore, cutting edge researchers believe the really important discoveries wont come from looking at linear strands of genes but from examining the interaction between dozens of genes at once. Scientists could in theory use biochips, arrays of hundreds of bits of your DNA placed in a silicon wafer, to adjudicate how how a drug would interact with your particular biochemistry (Moore, 56).