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The Human Genome Project



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Computers and the Human Genome Project

Slide 24

March 2009

One critical component of all of this was the need for sufficiently fast computers to do this. You needed a computer that was both quick and had sufficient memory and thus you needed sufficient RAM to assemble all the sequences and sufficient hard drive space to crunch and analyze the sequence and these computers were not developed until 1990. Thus, one of the fastest supercomputers of the day was utilized to assemble those sequences into the first human genome draft sequence but today computers are over 1,000 times faster with 500 times more memory. So a portable computer that you carry around under your arm has more sequencing power than the fastest computer on the planet from 10 years ago.

Computers and the Human Genome Project

 


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