Joint Genome Institute
In 2003, the Human Genome Project announced the sequencing of the complete human genome. The sequence of 3 billion A’s, T’s, C’s and G’s (that represent the four chemicals found in DNA) had been deciphered. A lot of that work had been done in Walnut Creek at the Joint Genome Institute, where long strands of DNA were split into tiny shreds, inserted into E. coli bacteria, multiplied over and over, extracted, made to fluoresce in four colors, and then read by robots. The work continues today sequencing the genomes of bacteria, animals, fish, plants and viruses.
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