It is interesting to note that when the US government began the HGN project in 1990, most people had little if any understanding of the scope of impact this research would have. Today it is common knowledge the far reaching effects of the 13 year project to understand the Human DNA.
In the iPhone Application iVote, a recent question confirmed what many suspected to be true; Americans still don’t understand the most basic information contained within the DNA strand.
The question “How many genes are in the human genome?” seemed simple enough, however the world-wide answers varied greatly.
21% 23
27% 46
8% 20, 000 - 30, 000
7% 100,000 - 200,000
9% 250, 000
28% 3.2 billion
The correct answer to the question is 20, 000 - 30, 000.
23 is the number of pairs of chromosomes.
3.2 billion is the number of chemical base pairs.
With so much information so readily available, the general public should be better than an 8% correct ratio.
TimHowardFan14, who by the way is not from the USA, was the 1st to post a correct response just 1 hour and 28 minutes after the question was posted.
Then we have the highly educated Mb167204 (from the USA), “I have a degree in cellular and molecular biology. The real answer is something around 26, 000″.
The USA alone was about average with 7% getting the answer correct.
The British proved to be of a higher intellect by scoring 17% correctly.
Australia, France and Germany also did better than the USA coming in at 10-15% each.
THE Human Genome Project website discusses in great detail the specifics of the research.
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