Similarly, we knew nothing of gene therapy, or genetic profiles for diseases. With completion of the sequencing, we've learned some fascinating and promising things, as well as some unexpected and even odd things. For instance, the genome is lumpy, wildly diverse with areas that are sparse as desert and others that are dense as New York City's population. The human genome count is considerably lower in the number of genes than we expected, as you've probably heard from the media coverage. Not 100,000 but 30,000.
Human genes can make more proteins than genes of other organisms.
The average human gene can make three different proteins. And human proteins are more architecturally complex than those of other organisms. It turns out that all of us, anywhere and everywhere in the world, are 99.9 percent identical at the DNA level, and most of our genetic differences show up among all ethnicities and races. There is no scientific basis for precise racial categories. This clearly makes ethnicities and race more social, and cultural, and even environmental.