ABSTRACT
This chapter states that the human genome project has a life of its own. One of the striking characteristics of the human genome project, and one of its more appealing aspects as a social enterprise, is the extraordinarily diverse backgrounds of the individuals that have been drawn to it. The data explosion continued through the early 1980 and by 1985 GenBank had a total of 6 million bases, approximately 1 million of which represented human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Although the workshop is on DNA sequencing, the initial stimulus to mathematical and computational analysis was the growth of protein sequences in the 1960's. Native protein is ingested by a B cell, macrophage or dendritic cell, enzymatically cleaved, and recycled to the surface in the form of short peptides that are recognized in conjunction with products of the major histocompatibility gene complex (MHC). Moreover, the generic fold of MHC products is now known from the crystal structure of a class 1 product.
