Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is. - Oscar Wilde
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The Story of You: ENCODE and the human genome
December 23, 2012
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Ever since a monk called Mendel started breeding pea plants we’ve been learning about our genomes. In 1953, Watson, Crick and Franklin described the structure of the molecule that makes up our genomes: the DNA double helix. Then, in 2001, scientists wrote down the entire 3-billion letter code contained in the average human genome. Now they’re trying to interpret that code; to work out how it’s used to make different types of cells and different people. The ENCODE project, as it’s called, is the latest chapter in the story of you.
To read the ENCODE research papers and more, visit http://www.nature.com/ENCODE