Easy Science Conference: The human genome. From past to the future.

 

The genome sequence is the set of instructions that determine the biological characteristics of living things (in our case, traits like the color of the eyes, the skin, our height, the predisposition to certain diseases, etc..) Human reference genome sequence was deciphered in 2001, as a result of the more than 10 years joint work of hundreds of biologists andinformatitians. The total cost of the project was around $3000 million US dollars.

 

Since then, experimental and computational methods have dramatically progressed and now the cost  has lower to $3000 US dollars aproximately. In the near future we will be able to knowthe gnome sequence of each and everyone of us.

 

During the talk we’ll summarize the different chapters of the human genome project and discuss how genome knowledge can change our lives.

 

Roderic Guigó is coordinator of the Bioinformatics and Genomics group at the CRG. He has an extended international reputation in bioinformatics. His goup has participated in the ENCODE Project Read the press release about the results of ENCODE.

 

Date: January 23, 2013