like me in lebanon i just want to be home. but, for me, the idea of home is lost and i don t know when or whether i will ever be able to go back and live peacefully in my country and contribute to the rebuilding of my own country in a free and democratic way. and that s really what many, many syrians around the world feel that the world has forgotten about their plight. it s 20 years since the human genome was mapped something that offers the hope of cures for a big range of diseases. but the original genome was largely based on the dna of a single individual, an american of african and european descent. now, scientists have mapped what s being called a pan genome, made up of data from 47 people from right across the world. i spoke to pallab ghosh, the bbc science correspondent.
so many technologies like ai and nuclear physics that also have the potential for terrible harm to humanity, but the point for us as a society is to make sure that they re used for good and, of course, the scientific community have a particular obligation to communicate their sides, to say what it can be used for and what it can t be used for. when you think what the effect of studying the genome of one person was, this is really opening a door to an extraordinary future, isn t it? to find out the instruction manual of how a person is created is an incredible thing, and we ve onlyjust begun to scratch the surface. and now we ve got the pan genome, it s 47 people at the moment. the aim in a few years is for it to be 350 and then even larger as more and more countries get involved. and we re going to get such insights. it s the start of a revolution
i spoke to pallab ghosh, the bbc science correspondent. the human genome project, which was completed 20 years ago, was essentially the sequence of mostly one person. and, of course, we don t have exactly the same dna. of course, the human genome project has been incredibly successful in understanding in general terms, the diseases that are caused by inherited disorders. what we have now is something that s much wider, called the pan genome. but the first genome was taken from, what, an american who was, who had african and european ancestry? 70% was taken from an african american that had european and african ancestry, so relatively broad, but it s one person s dna, and, of course, there are people from other backgrounds.
i just want to be home. but, for me, the idea of home is lost and i don t know when or whether i will ever be able to go back and live peacefully in my country and contribute to the rebuilding of my own country in a free and democratic way. and that s really what many, many syrians around the world feel that the world has forgotten about their plight. it s 20 years since the human genome was mapped, something that offers the hope of cures for a big range of diseases. but the original genome was largely based on the dna of a single individual, an american of african and european descent. now, scientists have mapped what s being called a pan genome, made up of data from 47 people from right across the world.
twinge of anxiety about this? so many technologies like ai and nuclear physics that also have the potential for terrible harm to humanity, but the point for us as a society is to make sure that they re used for good and, of course, the scientific community have a particular obligation to communicate their sides, to say what it can be used for and what it can t be used for. when you think what the effect of studying the genome of one person was, this is really opening a door to an extraordinary future, isn t it? to find out the instruction manual of how a person is created is an incredible thing, and we ve onlyjust begun to scratch the surface. and now we ve got the pan genome, it s 47 people at the moment. the aim in a few years is for it to be 350 and then even larger as more and more countries get involved.