When Venter speculated in print that there might be only 60,000 or 70,000 human genes, he got a furious call from Steinberg. Steinberg reportedly shouted. To Steinberg, individual genes were a commodity. More was better. Part of the answer may be proteins.
Proteins carry out the activities of cells, and making proteins is what genes mostly do.
But a gene can be involved in construction of a number of different proteins, each of which can perform a different job. What this means is that the really interesting part of the Human Genome Project has hardly begun. Only 7,000 or so human genes out of the hypothetical 48,011 have even been named, and genome researchers know something about the function of only a fraction of those. At the announcement on Monday, Venter predicted that the analysis will take most of this century. Lots more information about what specific genes do must be acquired before the HGP starts paying off in the widespread medical wonders you have been promised.