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I'm also curious. They said the same thing about the human genome, but once it was mapped nothing really happened. If anything, we realised that we knew even L

I'm also curious. They said the same thing about the human genome, but once it was mapped nothing really happened. If anything, we realised that we knew even LESS about the human body than before because the genome didn't provide a magical blueprint to fix all our biological ills. We got a list of ingredients, but still don't know how to put it all together. Answers to questions about gene expression and protein folding still remain, and the research for them continues as they did before using the same old wet lab techniques. One thing biologists did learn from the HGP was how useful computers were. That was actually what I studied in university: computational biology.

ChuckMcM 15y ago
Perhaps you were oversold on the HGP :-) Actually as more and more humans have their DNA mapped, and we begin to see the variations and nuance it becomes more valuable. The HGP was analagous to getting a map of the United States with the state outlines and names filled in, and perhaps outlines on the major bodies of water. As the technology improved each successive 'frame' that gets layered into that provides additional information (capital cities, roads, etc). So 'finding the Higgs boson' won't change humanity like 'achieving a stable fusion reaction with net power generation' would but it does let people use that information in finding solutions to problems that are life changing. In biology, the combination of the HGP and the work on understanding cellular mechanics and operation, will eventually result in tools where we don't 'cure' disease so much as 'fix' it.