The Incredible Shrinking Human Genome

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No, the size of the genome has not changed, but the number of genes we thought it contains certainly has. After lots of double checking, there are fewer known protein coding genes today (~19,000) than there were when the human genome was first published, and even that count (~23,000) was shockingly small, according to the predictions of the world’s top geneticists. The nature of the genome has consistently surprised people, but mostly because they applied Darwinian concepts to it. Instead, the genome is a wonderful testimony to the engineering prowess of God, who built something unexpected.

LInks:

• GeneSweep
• One-gene-one-enzyme
• Central dogma of molecular biology
• Amaral et al. 2014 The status of the human gene catalogue, Nature 622(7981):41-47.
• What on earth is a ‘gene’? Slicing and dicing the genome
• The Barrier has been breached: new discoveries are challenging neo-Darwinism