Agriculture 1005

Andrew Smith 10/22/12

Writing Assignment 3 http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/343850/title/Team_releases_seque l_to_the_human_genome 1. Back in 2003 the Human Genome Project was completed and the entire human genome sequence it was revealed to us. Roughly two percent of the genome was believed to carry instructions for building proteins with the rest being junk data. Now a project carried out by the National Human Genome Research Institute, codenamed ENCODE, has revealed that after further analysis of 21000 protein making strands of DNA along with 30000 junk data genes, that at least 80 percent of the genome serves some purpose. The ENCODE team also seeks out to gain a greater understanding of human evolution by studying which genes from the data are changing slower than other parts 2. This news articles correlates with the section of our studies that dealt with the making of the human genome project and what this meant for us and our recent lecture over human evolution. This article further extends the premise of the human genome project through giving us a greater understanding of the human genome and the genes that make it up and that there is a far greater amount of activity happening in the genome than was earlier believed. 3. While the ENCODE project may still be a work in progress the scientific evidence, that is coming from it data, seems to be of fine quality and one that can be trusted and looked upon. It is highly supported, cited, and backed by over 400 researchers that have worked on the project with over 30 companion papers on it that have been published in other respected science outlets. The underlining hypothesis of this project seems to be that there is no wasted data in the human genome with the prediction being that all genes in the human genome serve some purpose. The purposed method of going about this seems to be one of an observation standpoint. There seems to be no confliction of interest with the researchers in the case study with no seen opposition towards the claim brought out by the ENCODE group. Through my attendance of lectures that have dealt on the subject matter of the human genome project, I believe that the evidence leads towards a clear and supporting claim on their conclusion