Question

What is Human Genome Project? Why is the Human Genome Project called a Mega project?

Hint:

HGP was a 13-year project coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institute of Health.

Answer 1

Step 1: Definition - The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA and mapping all the genes of the human genome.
Step 2: Scale - It is called a "Mega Project" because of its sheer scale. The human genome has approximately $3 \times 10^9$ base pairs. If the cost was \$3 per base pair, the total cost would be \$9 billion.
Step 3: Data Handling - If the sequences were stored in books, it would require 3300 books, each with 1000 pages and 1000 letters per page. This required the development of high-speed computational devices (Bioinformatics).