Biotechnology and History of Genetic Engineering

In 1990 molecular biologists around the world began working on what ranks as perhaps the greatest achievement of biotechnology, the Human Genome Project, in which the more than 3 billion nucleotides of DNA in the human nucleus were ultimately sequenced. Although DNA sequencing began in 1977, it was the development in the 1990s of automated DNA sequencers and powerful computers to store and analyze the data that made this project feasible. The first draft of the human genome was completed in 2001. With the complete sequence available, scientists will be able to "mine the genome" to find important gene products and to design specific drugs to target gene product. The twenty-first century will see tremendous new advances using biotechnology.