It's not completely complete, and perhaps never will be. But the version of the human genome sequence that opened for business yesterday (April 14) at the University of California-Santa Cruz is so accurate that scientists will be consulting it for the next several centuries, Francis Collins, who heads the US National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), told
"You can think of this as the end of the high-throughput phase of human sequencing. The fact that it's yielded up 99% of the gene-containing DNA at this level of accuracy means that almost everybody who is looking for answers from the genome will find it in the most final form that they ever could have dreamed of," Collins said.
The remaining gaps, numbering about 400, comprise about 1% of the gene-containing euchromatin. "We've known for a long time that there are parts of the human genome that cannot be reliably ...
