Necessity Is The Mother of Invention

Today, I want to share with you one interesting story about the Human Genome Project (HGP). I was reading some articles about the HGP and found something very interesting. Then I realized how humans can invent and discover so many things!

Enjoy the story!

In 1984, Renato Dulbeco proposed the idea of “sequencing the complete human genome.” At that time, we didn’t have much significant information about the genome.

With the original idea to understand cancer biology, a community of 12 experts met to discuss HGP. The straightforward answer for the project was a big “NO.”

That’s obvious!

Humans are programmed to do common and easy tasks.

Even the NIH (National Institute of Health) refused to fund it. The reason was pretty much clear– Lack of technology and infrastructure.

In the 80's science lacked the technology and infrastructure that could support and uplift such a huge project.

But! Great people made great decisions!

The project was again proposed in the U.S. assembly, and guess what! They were interested in the project but had doubts!

Socking the U.S. Department of Energy came into the picture to fund the project, initially. With a very minimal, tedious, and lengthy Sanger sequencing technique, the project was initiated.

It took almost 10 years to completely sequence the human genome by different scientists and different laboratories across the world.

They were tired, frustrated and exhausted with the manual sequencing approach, and here’s the quote that comes true, “necessity is the mother of invention.”

On the other end of the science, scientists and companies pushed themself, days and nights, to develop high throughput and automated sequencing approaches. However, in the later half of the project, they were able to develop automated Sanger sequencing and moderate throughput pyrosequencing.

But we know, it was after the HGP, the sequencing era began. Investors took an interest in the companies dealing with sequencing. Newer and higher throughput platforms like Illumina, Ion Torrent, and futuristic PacBio and ONT are now within the range of science.

Now we can sequence the complete human genome within two days. Imagine, it took 13 years to do the same job!

Don’t you think it wasn't possible without the HGP?

Let me know your thoughts.

Hope you enjoyed the story.

Seen you soon,

Dr Tushar (Genetic Education Academy)

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