Fun story about nature surprising the scientists. I learned this one from an excellent #EMBOPodcast with @CoriBargmann & @cyrilpedia.
https://www.embo.org/podcasts/our-special-feature-as-humans-is-communication/
The era was the human genome project (late 1990s). In question: how many genes do we have? Going in, they knew that a worm (with 302 neurons) had ~13K genes. The presumption was that we, with our billions of neurons (and other complexities), would have a lot more.
GeneSweep was the official betting pool, organized by Cold Spring Harbor. Of the 460 (presumably well informed scientists) who entered the competition, the winner was the one who made the SMALLEST guess (~25K). The mean guess was 62K; someone guessed as high as 200K.
The small number of genes in the human genome (25K) surprised nearly everyone.
@NicoleCRust @CoriBargmann @cyrilpedia
Since the end of my undergrad in biology to now—23 years—, the gene count in the human Y chromosome increased from 3 (SRY, an MHC, and a third for ear hair) to over 300. Many small and “unusual” genes, and RNA-only genes, have been discovered since.
And these are genes. If splicing variants were to be counted, I’d guess the higher count of 200,000 for the whole human genome wouldn’t be far off. Splicing variants are cell type-specific, they should count.
@albertcardona @NicoleCRust @CoriBargmann
In which case the fly DSCAM locus would have more 'genes' than many organisms :)
@albertcardona @cyrilpedia @CoriBargmann
Indeed, the surprises continue. Isn't it exciting when something called the Central Dogma turns out not to be the book, but just the first in a series? Nature is a fabulous author.
@cyrilpedia @NicoleCRust @CoriBargmann
That’s why counting genes is futile. Molecules, if anything. At least proteins and RNAs, even if each can be post-transcriptionally and post-translationally modified in a cell type-dependent manner.