The human genome project aims to determine the sequence in which the four bases of DNA occur in each of the 24 different chromosomes in the nucleus of a human cell. Chemical staining techniques indicate that the human chromosomes are all discernibly different in size, and contain between 50 million and 250 million base pairs. But present‐day techniques cannot give more definitive numbers for the sizes of the human chromosomes, in part because they are the largest well‐defined molecules modern science has encountered and weight standards and analytical techniques for handling such large molecules are not very well developed.
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© 1990 American Institute of Physics.
1990
American Institute of Physics
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