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By the Time They're Done Analyzing, There Won't Be Any Genes Left

Dec 10, 2007

Poor Steve Salzberg. Not only does GTO routinely misspell his name, but now he's 4,000 genes short of where he was a couple of weeks ago.

In research he calls "compelling," Michele Clamp and cronies from the Broad Institute have published work in PNAS saying that the total number of genes in the human genome should be reduced from previous estimates of about 25,000 to 20,500. "Their analysis is pretty convincing - they did careful alignments of all human genes to both mouse and dog, and were able to identify several thousand genes that didn't seem to exist in our furry friends," Salzberg writes.

 

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