Science & technology | The Human Genome Project

How the Human Genome Project revolutionised biology

Twenty years on, the field has changed beyond recognition

https://www.genome.gov/image-galleryResearchers read a Sanger sequencing autoradiograph, or “autorad.” — Image: National Human Genome Research I

Apr 8th 2023

Big is beautiful. That was the message of post-second-world-war science. The model was the Manhattan Project to build the first atom bombs. When hostilities ended, it continued with larger and larger particle accelerators, to probe matter at smaller and smaller scales—and bigger telescopes to do that probing at the largest scales imaginable. And, of course, there was the space race, which at its height in the mid-1960s absorbed more than 4% of America’s federal budget. After the Apollo Moon landings it went on to spawn the space shuttle and the International Space Station, as well as a programme of uncrewed missions to explore the nether reaches of the solar system.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Twenty years later...”