- Why did Sanger's sequencing method scale better than Gilbert's chemical method, and what large-scale project did that scalability eventually enable?
Human Genome Project
The effort to sequence and map the entire human genome.
- What later discoveries in bacteria, flies, and humans eventually vindicated McClintock's model of mobile genetic elements?
- How much of the human genome is now estimated to be made up of transposable elements?
- Why did automated DNA sequencing turn the Human Genome Project from a feasibility question into a logistics one?
- What agencies signed the memorandum that formally launched the Human Genome Project, and what was its budget and timeline?
- What criticism did the Human Genome Project face about whether the genome alone would explain human biology?
- How far ahead of schedule did the Human Genome Project finish, and what did it make possible for later biology?
- How did sequencing Haemophilus influenzae set the template for the Human Genome Project?
- Why was chromosome 22 chosen as the first human chromosome to be completely sequenced?
- What did it mean for the sequence to be 'complete' rather than a draft with gaps and errors?
- What diseases have since been linked to genes carried on chromosome 22?
- Which two teams independently produced a working draft of the human genome in 2000?
- How many protein-coding genes did the completed analysis find, and how did that compare to predictions?
- How did the public Human Genome Project consortium and Craig Venter's Celera Genomics come to publish competing drafts on consecutive days?
- Why did the discovery of only about thirty thousand human genes surprise biologists in 2001?
- What is whole-genome shotgun sequencing, and why did the scientific establishment consider Venter's approach reckless?
- How did the competition between Celera Genomics and the public Human Genome Project consortium end?
- What was significant about Venter becoming the first person to have his genome sequenced by name?