Dr. Francis Collins, who heads the public effort known as the Human Genome Project, and Craig Venter, president of the private counterpart Celera Genomics, agree the potential this project gives us for making better medicine is tremendous. The mapping is not quite complete. The majority of the DNA is sequenced, but now scientists have to figure out what those genes do. What is their function, what do their instructions mean. Venter's company has mapped the genome of the mouse to help in this undertaking.
Scientists can compare parts of the human genome to the mouse and see where the differences lie.
Another surprise is how few genes humans actually have. Groups have been saying there's 100,000 or 140,000 genes, but there's only 30- to 35,000 genes in the genome. Both projects will start telling us what they've learned so far from the genome early in 2001. It's this type of information that will lead to better and more precise medicine. Genome science has already produced gene therapy, a technique that attempts to actually replace or fix damaged genes.