22 May 2000

Following a study of the genome of a fish, Genoscope, the French National Sequencing Center, has announced that the human genome contains between 28 000 and 34 000 genes.

Researchers from the laboratory of Jean Weissenbach, General Director of Genoscope, have published a study of 30% of the so-called compact genome sequence of a fish, Tetraodon nigroviridis, and compared it with 42% of the human genome. This study appears in the June 2000 issue of Nature Genetics. A search for similarities between the two genomes led Genoscope to conclude that the human genome contains between 28 000 and 34 000 genes, and validates the development of a new generation tool for the analysis of genomes and identification of genes.

The number of genes was determined by an extensive calculation which consisted of 2 billion comparisons of DNA sequences. This calculation, and the exploitation of the results it produced, was performed using the LASSAP bioinformatics platform, which consists of software produced by the French company, Gene-IT.

This discovery is supported by the publication--in the same issue of Nature Genetics--of a study by the American bioinformatician Philip Green, who, using a different approach, also found 34 000 genes.

This announcement by Genoscope comes at the moment when the sequencing of the human genome is almost finished, and will lead into the "annotation" era, in which the sequencing data will be analyzed in order to determine the role and function of the genes.

At the present time, the number of genes in the human genome is a matter of major scientific controversy, which has divided the genetics community..