Talk:Human genome

Human genome was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
October 1, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
September 24, 2009	Good article reassessment	Delisted

Current status: Delisted good article

Human Genetic History Start‑class (inactive)

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Human Genetic History, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.Human Genetic HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject Human Genetic HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Human Genetic HistoryHuman Genetic History articles
Start	This article has been given a rating which conflicts with the project-independent quality rating in the banner shell. Please resolve this conflict if possible.

Molecular Biology: Genetics / MCB

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Molecular Biology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Molecular Biology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Molecular BiologyWikipedia:WikiProject Molecular BiologyTemplate:WikiProject Molecular BiologyMolecular Biology articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
	This article is supported by the Genetics task force (assessed as High-importance).
	This article is supported by the Molecular and Cell Biology task force (assessed as Top-importance).

Medicine Mid‑importance

	Medicine portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine, which recommends that medicine-related articles follow the Manual of Style for medicine-related articles and that biomedical information in any article use high-quality medical sources. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.MedicineWikipedia:WikiProject MedicineTemplate:WikiProject Medicinemedicine articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article was selected on the Medicine portal as one of Wikipedia's best articles related to Medicine.

This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

"Wikipedia and Academia". Vermont Public Radio. 7 March 2013.

Archives

Index

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by when more than 5 sections are present.

quality

according to the url below, a paper from top experts in a top journal (ie highly authoritative) says that there are many many gaps (unsequenced) regions in the human genome imo, the lack of attention paid to these gaps is somewhat misleading for the general public; eg when scientists use the word "complete" it means, per the dictionary, that we have no gap, no missign sequence genome yet this is empirically false http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13907.html

Number of genes

We don't know the exact number of genes in the human genome. There are at least 19,000 protein-coding genes and no more than 20,000. The number of noncoding genes is all over the map. There are only a few thousand (at most!) that have been confirmed as real genes but there are many more transcribed regions that some scientists call genes even though they have not been shown to have a function. This is a problem since the definition of a gene requires that it produce a FUNCTIONAL product.

The number of noncoding genes predicted by Ensembl is down to 25,967 in the latest annotation (CRCh38.13) but most of those are stretches of DNA that produce lncRNAs that have not been shown to have a function.

The issue was raised last year (see Noncoding DNA above) but not resolved. We need to present a consistent view of the number of genes in this article and we need to point out the controversy over the number of noncoding genes. Genome42 (talk) 14:41, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Chromosome table

The data in the large table on individual chromosomes is ten years old. Not only does it contain outdated information and unfounded speculation but it's also far too complicated and specific for a Wikipedia article.

I think we should remove it. What do others think? Genome42 (talk) 14:49, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Reorganization

I suggest that we reorganize the entire article to eliminate redundancy and conflicting information. I think we should begin by moving some information out of the introduction and putting it into the main body of the article.

I think the main subsections should be:

          Size of the human genome
          Content of the human genome
          Sequencing the human genome
          Information content (in bits)
          Genomic variation in humans
          Personal genomics
          Human genetic disorders (including gene knockouts)
          Evolution
          Mitochondrial DNA
          Epigenome
Genome42 (talk) 18:12, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The section on content could have the following subsections:

Protein-coding genes

Non-coding genes

Regulatory sequences

Centromeres and telomeres

Other functional elements

Pseudogenes

Transposons and viruses

Junk DNA

If there are no objections, I'll begin by moving the current content into the new subsections. Then we can edit the information to make it more consistent and more readable. Genome42 (talk) 18:17, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

3,054,815,472

3,054,815,472 base pairs? The box claims 3,117,275,501. Neither are, of course, right (or maybe both are). Why not give a little credit to the readers and presume that they can handle a bit of complexity? Like saying the number of base pairs is determined using a specific individual's dna (or a group of specific individuals). Why not mention that while we're a diploid species, as far as known we all contain tetraploid and octaploid cells? (This is true, I'm guessing, after a number of cell divisions in the embryo.) Why not say the reference dna is normally selected to be typical and avoids individuals with known aneuploidy, euploidy (except as mentioned), and sex chromosome (rare) variations. In counting the base pairs, there are errors, and any two (independent) researchers are NOT likely to come up with the same exact number, even if the same reference dna is used? Why not say that doing a complete genome is very, very difficult? (I'm not sure that it's ever been fully done ("fully" means counting all base pairs in one lab, by one group of researchers). Also, why not mention that even a reference person will have a number of mutations in their cells (those with nuclei) so that even "their" genome doesn't fully describe their "complete set"?98.21.208.178 (talk) 07:13, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to fix this and started the reorganization that I suggested in July 2023. Genome42 (talk) 23:09, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]