Entire genome of extinct human decoded from fossil

(PhysOrg.com) -- In 2010, Svante Pääbo and his colleagues presented a draft version of the genome from a small fragment of a human finger bone discovered in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia. The DNA sequences showed ...

'Quadruple helix' DNA discovered in human cells

In 1953, Cambridge researchers Watson and Crick published a paper describing the interweaving 'double helix' DNA structure - the chemical code for all life. Now, in the year of that scientific landmark's 60th Anniversary, ...

Prehistoric humans rarely mated with their cousins

Today, more than 10 percent of all global marriages occur among first or second cousins. While cousin-marriages are common practice in some societies, unions between close relatives are discouraged in others. In a new study, ...

Neandertals had older mothers and younger fathers

When the ancestors of modern humans left Africa 50,000 years ago they met the Neandertals. In this encounter, the Neandertal population contributed around two percent of the genome to present day non-African populations. ...

Scientists create first 3-D map of human genome

(PhysOrg.com) -- For the first time, scientists have developed a method for generating accurate three-dimensional models of the entire DNA strand of a cell, known as a genome.

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Human genome

The human genome is the genome of Homo sapiens, which is stored on 23 chromosome pairs. Twenty-two of these are autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex-determining. The haploid human genome occupies a total of just over 3 billion DNA base pairs. The Human Genome Project (HGP) produced a reference sequence of the euchromatic human genome, which is used worldwide in biomedical sciences.

The haploid human genome contains an estimated 20,000–25,000 protein-coding genes, far fewer than had been expected before its sequencing. In fact, only about 1.5% of the genome codes for proteins, while the rest consists of RNA genes, regulatory sequences, introns and (controversially) "junk" DNA.

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