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Human Genome - Underlying Scientific Mysteries

Shivani Kachroo and Sivakumar JT Gowder

A gene refers to the functional unit of heredity. Genes are made up of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). In humans, the size of genes varies from a few hundred DNA bases to more than 2 million bases. The genes in human beings (Homo sapiens) are referred as human genome. It is made up of 23 chromosome pairs with a total of about 3 billion DNA base pairs. The gene sequences to make a protein occupy only about 1.1% of the chromosomes. The rest is well known as junk DNA; that is useful in genetic fingerprinting