GENOME INDIA PROJECT (GIP).

Scientists had published the map of the human genome for the first time nearly two decades ago which was hailed as a breakthrough.
In 2003, scientists got the breakthrough, but it was incomplete as about 8% of the human DNA was left unsequenced.
Now for the first time, a large team has accounted for completing the 8% picture of the human genome.
In 2020, the Ministry of Science and Technology had approved an ambitious gene-mapping project called the Genome India Project (GIP).

Genome

A genome refers to all of the genetic material in an organism, and the human genome is mostly the same in all people, but a very small part of the DNA does vary between one individual and another.
Every organism’s genetic code is contained in its Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (DNA), the building blocks of life.
The discovery that DNA is structured as a “double helix” by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, started the quest for understanding how genes dictate life, its traits, and what causes diseases.
Each genome contains all of the information needed to build and maintain that organism.
In humans, a copy of the entire genome contains more than 3 billion DNA base pairs.
The genetic sequence was made available in 2003 from the Human Genome Project.
Human Genome Project is an international collaboration between 1990 and 2003, containing information from a region of the human genome known as the euchromatin.
Here, the chromosome is rich in genes, and the DNA encodes for protein.
The 8% that was left out was in the area called heterochromatin, which is a smaller portion of the genome, and does not produce protein.
There were at least two key reasons why heterochromatin was given lower priority.

First: This part of the genome was thought to be “junk DNA”, because it had no clear function.

Second: The euchromatin contained more genes that were simpler to sequence with the tools available at the time.

Now, the fully sequenced genome is the result of the efforts of a global collaboration called the Telomere-2-Telomere (T2T) project.
The invention of new methods of DNA sequencing and computational analysis helped complete the reading of the remaining 8% of the genome.
The T2T consortium used the now-complete genome sequence as a reference to discover more than 2 million additional variants in the human genome.
Complement the Standard Human Reference Genome:
The new T2T reference genome will complement the standard human reference genome, known as Genome Reference Consortium build 38 (GRCh38), which originated from the Human Genome Project and has been updated since.

SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES,MINT

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