Scientists said yesterday that they have determined the precise order of the 3 billion bits of genetic code that carry the instructions for making a chimpanzee, humankind's closest cousin.
Scientists have completed the finished sequence of the human genome, or genetic blueprint of life, which holds the keys to transforming medicine and understanding disease.
Researchers have sequenced the genes both for the parasite that causes malaria and for the mosquito that spreads it to humans. The double triumph gives medical science new weapons in the war on a disease that kills almost 3 million people a year.
The genetics revolution is generating such a gigantic glut of information that artificial intelligence may be the only way scientists will ever put it to practical use. Inspired by an AI effort to record all of the common-sense knowledge shared among humans called Cyc, scientists have come up with a technology that can gather all of the information scientists know about an organism.
A group of Boston researchers have taken advantage of the human genome project, which is mapping the exact sequence of base pairs in human DNA, to form a new strategy for finding invading bacteria and viruses.
With the Human Genome Project — the effort to work out the sequence of the three billion chemical letters that embody human heredity — early complete, biologists are facing a daunting transition. They must move from their traditional pursuit of understanding one gene at a time to the challenge of figuring out how tens of thousands of genes work in concert in the human cell.
The battles between disease-causing pathogens and the body's defenses have evolved into a complex arms race of sorts. To better understand those battles and find new ways of blocking infection, researchers have turned to genomics — the analysis of an organism's thousands of genes and the roles they play.
Scientists have decoded the genome of the anthrax bacterium and are sharing their findings with law enforcement officials eager for clues about who is using the lethal microbe as a deadly weapon.
The success of efforts to map the human genome is driving the development of a new industry, bioinformatics, which in turn is driving the future of advanced computing.
Dr. Francis Collins urged people to critically examine claims to have 'finished' sequencing the human genome.