"Perhaps nobody paid much attention because the missing sequences didn't seem to matter. But now it appears they may play a role in conditions such as cancer and autism." Sharon Begley in STAT
The Genome sequence when printed fills a huge book of close print Photo: (By Stephencdickson - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sharon Begley Photo: Statnews.com
Back in 2003, The Human Genome Project successfully read and published an entire human genome made up of 3 billion base pairs.
It took a global team of scientists 13 years, cost billions of dollars, and was hailed as a great victory to usher in a new era of better medical treatments and technology to make us live longer healthier lives.
But in reality, the human genome was never actually fully sequenced.
Fast-forward to today and it's apparent that more work needs to be done before we can truly claim to have cracked the code of life.
Now attention is focusing on the missing pieces and their potential links to ageing and diseases including cancer.
Sharon Begley, a senior science writer at the health and life-sciences publication STAT, has the latest.
