"M Arino"  wrote in message
>
> First:  Atkins claims that the Cro-Magnon are no modern humans, but
> some "homo species" slightly different to modern humans.  Is this the
> case? If my memory doesn't fail me, Cro.Magnons are Homo Sapiens
> Sapiens, and therefore already modern humans as far as species is
> concerned.
>
Species aren't defined through time. It's likely that Cro. Magnons would be
able to interbreed with modern man, however it is also likely that there
would be some differences - just as you can tell is someone is an African or
a Chinaman  you would be able to pick up that someone was Cro. Magnon, if
one walked down the street.
>
> Second, He argues that the argument between Celera genomics and
> the Human Genome project was sort of "silly and childish". 
I think that
> Celera anounced that they had made the mapping of the human
> genome, when in fact they had only sequenced the DNA of a single
> individual.
> To have a complete map, one should have all the variations of single
> genes, and their function, in the picture.  In short, Atkins doesn't
> seem to difference the two procedures. Is this I said right or do I
> have something very wrong in here?
>
There are many polymorphisms in the human genome, and some are rare. To
detect every polymorphism you would have to sequence every living
individual.
The process of sequencing is also inaccurate, so you need to sequence a few
times to be reasonably sure of getting an accurate transcript.
What Celera did was to chop the genome into small segments, sequence the
segments, and then patch them together using a supercomputer. However they
used the data from the public sequencing project to help them build the map.
What they did was legal, and arguably not morally wrong, but the
free-enterprise for-profit model doesn't work particularly well for science.
Their data can't be made freely available, or they wouldn't have a profit.
One thing you can say is that competition from Celera spurred the public
project on to greater efforts.
>
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