The Human Genome Needs Updating. But How Do We Make It Fair?

January 30, 2023

(The Guardian) – The single string of As, Ts, Cs and Gs eventually became the first human reference genome. Since its publication in 2003, the reference has revolutionised genome sequencing and helped scientists find thousands of disease-causing mutations. Yet at its core is a somewhat ironic problem: the code meant to represent the human species is mostly based on just one man from Buffalo, New York. Though humans are very similar, “One person is not representative of the world,” says Pui-Yan Kwok, a specialist in genome analysis based at University of California, San Francisco and Academia Sinica in Taiwan. As a result, most genome sequencing is fundamentally biased. (Read More)