• Question: What is a Genome I saw it on your profile?

    Asked by Lewdog to David on 15 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: David Howard

      David Howard answered on 15 Mar 2018:

      The genome is the complete sequence of DNA that is within every cell in the body.

Comments

  • Photo: Gemma

    Gemma commented on :

    Yep – our genome is 3 billion letters of DNA code long. It would take 56 years to read it out loud without stopping. It contains all our genes, but there is a lot more DNA in the genome than that which codes for genes – and we don’t yet know what most of it does!
    “Genomics” is when we study all of our genetic material rather than just looking at a particular gene (genetics). If we aren’t sure where to look for particular genetic information, we can sequence the whole genome. The problem then is trying to make sense of it all!
    Of the 3 billion DNA letters in our genome, only 3 million are different from person to person. That’s 1 in 1000. In other words the genomes of any two people are 99.9% identical. We tend to focus on the bits that are different from each other though as that’s where we expect the answers to questions like “what causes disease x” to lie.