Approximatly how many genes are in the human genome?
Although the completion of the Human Genome Project was celebrated in April 2003 and sequencing of the human chromosomes is essentially “finished,” the exact number of genes encoded by the genome is still unknown. October 2004 findings from The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, led in the United States by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the Department of Energy (DOE), reduce the estimated number of human protein-coding genes from 35,000 to only 20,000-25,000, a surprisingly low number for our species. Consortium researchers have confirmed the existence of 19,599 protein-coding genes in the human genome and identified another 2,188 DNA segments that are predicted to be protein-coding genes.
