What is the human genome?

While you read these words or drink your morning coffee, watch TV or sleep soundly, covered with a blanket, powerful computers systematically collect and systematize scientific materials, in which the human genome is on the first place among the studies.

Computers under the guidance of genetic scientists carefully catalog tens of thousands of genes contained in human DNA. According to the predictions of scientists, when all the necessary information is collected and entered into the computer, it will for a long time serve as a basis for studying human biology and for medical purposes.

Scientists also hope that after the human genome is fully deciphered, humanity will have a path to therapy, people will learn how to correct or replace defective genes.

Doctors also hope that after the human genome is fully researched, when science learns to read it without difficulty, a new generation of medicines should appear, which will be safe, but very effective in fighting and preventing diseases.

Perhaps this technology will also allow the doctor to review your genetic data, determine in advance what medicines will be best for you.

In addition to the prospects opening up to medicine, some people suggest that human genetic engineering can solve many social problems. During the period from the Second World War to the early 1990s, scientists argued that social problems could be reduced by reforming the economy and various institutions and improving the living conditions of people. However, in recent years, social problems have only increased. Therefore, many psychologists, sociologists and journalists put forward the hypothesis that the solution of these problems should be sought in the genes. Today, some people think that genes more than the environment, affect the behavior of an individual and a whole group.

Also, according to researchers, even this problem can be resolved by conducting certain manipulations with DNA. Scientists have already managed to double the duration of the existence of fruit flies and worms, and they piously believe that the same technique can be applied to people someday. The head of the Human Genome Project said: "For the first time, we can think about the reality of human immortality."

"Ha - ha! - will laugh at the last statement of cynics. "They compared it too: some fruit flies and worms-and such a highly developed system as a man!" Well, let the cynics laugh as much as they can. However, no matter how strange it may seem to anyone, looking for an answer to the question of how many genes a person has, scientists have come to the conclusion that their number is not much greater than the number of genes in such a simple organism as a large worm. Specifically, about this person has 28,000 genes (this is instead of the estimated 100,000, as the scientists expected, starting the project).

Although today the medicine uses the science of genetics quite widely for its own purposes. For example, there is the most common method of genetic testing of the human fetus, which has already been applied since the 1960s.

For the analysis, the doctor inserts the needle of the syringe into the uterus of the pregnant woman through the navel and takes a test of the amniotic fluid. This liquid is then examined to determine if the fruit does not have any serious genetic disorder.

This procedure, absolutely harmless for both the future mother and her offspring, is able to warn about such violations in the development of the fetus as the development of Down's disease or spina bifida.

However, not all the deviations in the development of the embryo can be eliminated by modern medicine. In most cases, it is able to simply make a tragic verdict: "Here an abortion is needed!"

So just to learn not just to kill the unborn sick man, but to adjust its development at an early stage, to eliminate unwanted changes in the fetus by genetic engineering, and scientists try to uncover the mystery of the human genome.