Scientists are taking medical technology to new heights as they race to map all of the genes, nearly 30,000, in the 46 chromosomes of the human body. Along the way, they hope to understand the basis of, and maybe even develop methods of treating certain genetic diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Muscular Dystrophy. They plan to do this by identifying the DNA sequence of an abnormal gene in which a disease originates and comparing it with the data of a normal or healthy gene. The entire research project is entitled "The Human Genome Project." .
"The Human Genome Project" is a large scale project being conducted by more than 200 laboratories, with even more researchers and labs having joined in. Most of the labs and researchers are located in France and the United States. The project started in 1990 and was slated to take 15 years and cost $3 billion in U.S. money for the entire project coming to roughly $200 million per year. Federal funding for the project is nearly 60% of the annual need. This has created some funding problems for the project. The project was estimated to have detailed maps of all of the chromosomes and discover the location of most of the human Genes by 1996. The two major "code crackers" are Craig Venter, the president of the private company Celera, and Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, a public health research facility funded mostly by the government. Collins' Human Genome Project has been plugging away at the genome since 1990. It originally planned to identify and sequence the code by within 15 years but with the introduction of new competition by Venter's Celera, their team made the promise to cut this time in half. Venter started out at the National Institute of Health--one of the backers of the Human Genome Project--but became frustrated with their slow pace and decided to start his own team. In 1998, he claimed that he could beat Collins and the National Institute of Health by using a riskier approach and by relying heavily on robots and computers to break down genetic material.
