I'd heard of it in passing years ago, but I never dug further. Now that I'm in a genetics class, I'm required to look further. This is the exciting thing about college. While my education may require me to choose classes that are unrelated to my major, I can still find ways for them to be useful. This class is actually useful for my major and my writing interests so I have a good deal with it either way.
The Human Genome Project's main goals were to:
- Map all of the genes
- Determine the sequence of every DNA base pair
- Make all of this information available to the public
To understand some of this, I'm going to give you a very brief course in genetics.
First off, our DNA is made of little puzzle pieces that match together called nucleotides. DNA is like a twisted ladder and the rungs are made of nitrogenous bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. For these bases, adenine matches with thymine, guanine matches with cytosine. DNA is made up of two strands and a sequence can look something like this: TACGACGCA
The most important thing to understand is that these base pairs and strands of DNA make up our chromosomes. Chromosomes are the condensed genetic material and what is in our genetic material controls are genotype and phenotype. The genetic expression of traits and the physical expression of traits.
If you like writing science-fiction, then learning more about these sorts of things can help you plan ahead or inspire you. If you want the population of your world to have genetic mutations, then it might be important to understand the basics of those occurrences in our world. When you understand these things and can help readers to understand them, they will be more willing to invest in your work. When things contain at least some of the truth that builds trust and readers will have a sense of familiarity with your story. Plus it's always exciting to recognize something that you have learned and be able to connect it to something else!
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