 The Human Genome Project was a huge project. It took place mainly from 1990 to 2003. Yes, it took that long and even after that it was only 85% complete. Slowly slowly the remaining of the sequences were added and it was declared to be absolutely 100% complete only in 2022 January. It was a big deal and therefore it involved participation by a number of countries. The US, the UK, Germany, France, Japan and China. So why was it such a big deal? Let's find out. So what is a genome? A genome is the haploid set of DNA in the nucleus. So what is the number of chromosomes in a human being? 46, right? So the haploid number would be 23. So for human beings, the human genome, it has 23 chromosomes. And why are we so interested in the human genome? Because it has all the genetic information for human beings. And what exactly do we mean by genetic information? That is the sequence of the DNA. The entire DNA that is there in our 23 chromosomes, that sequence, that contains all the genetic information. Now you know that DNA consists of a double helix. For the sake of simplicity, I have represented each of the helices as linear strands. They're actually not linear. They are helical, that is spiral as you already know. But we will look at what a sequence means. Actually this is also a recall for you. But just to look at the sequence of this stretch of DNA, I have drawn each strand of the DNA as linear strands. So as you know, each DNA strand has a sequence of bases. And since the bases are complementary to each other, they pair with each other. Each of these, which looked like the rungs of a ladder, is a base pair. So let's say we have this sequence T, G, C, A, T, G. This is the sequence of bases in one strand. And the other strand will have bases complementary to the first strand. So this is the sequence of base pairs in this stretch of DNA. But as you know, it's a very short stretch of DNA. The human genome has way longer DNA than this. It has more than 3 times 10 to the power 9 base pairs. So that's 3 million base pairs or 300 crore base pairs. So that's a huge number of base pairs. So the goal of the human genome project was to sequence 3 billion base pairs. So in these base pairs, the human genome has about 20,000 to 25,000 genes. So another goal of the human genome project was to identify this many genes. So okay, let's say we identify the genes. We sequence the entire genome, the entire 3 million base pairs. So what? So what are the benefits of the human genome project? Well, the first benefit was in terms of genetic diseases, which includes cancer. So to understand the genetic diseases better and the diseases which used to be incurable, actually the human genome project is helping us more and more in order to handle those kinds of diseases. So that's one benefit. Then there is medicine, the field of medicine in general. So traditionally the medications that were given to people were all the same. So for a particular disease, the medicine that was given to people was the same for every individual. So that doesn't always work. The same medicine may not work for every human being. And the reason is the differences in the human genome. So although the human genome is mostly the same in all human beings, there are some variations. The variations is about 0.6%. So because of this variation, not all medicines suit all people. So that means one size does not fit all. So the human genome project has helped us with this. The pharmaceutical companies are making medicines, catering to the differences in the genetics in different people. Another benefit is DNA fingerprinting. This is a technique that is used to identify criminals based on samples such as blood or hair. And what they do is they take the DNA sample and then try to identify it. And this technique was already there even before the human genome project was thought of. But the human genome project made it much easier so that now even if you have a very small amount of sample, you can still go ahead and do DNA fingerprinting in order to identify the criminal. So all in all, the human genome project has helped humankind in a big way and especially in the field of medicine.