Miracle Cure? A Decade of the Human Genome - Ten years ago to the day, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair announced the publication of the first draft of the human genome, a landmark in the Human Genome Project to sequence the entire DNA blueprint for Homo sapiens, the 3.6 billion letters of our genetic code.
It all began in 1953 at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge as Francis Crick and James Dewey Watson tried to make their model of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) fit together. They concluded that DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is made up of a double helix of sugar and phosphate 'backbones' joined by complementary sequences of base pairs – the letters of the genetic code
It was seen as one of the greatest scientific achievements of our age, a breakthrough that would usher in a new age of medicine. A decade later, Horizon finds out how close we are to developing the life-changing treatments that were hoped for. Horizon follows three people, each with a genetic disease, as they go behind the scenes at some of Britain's leading research labs to find out what the sequencing of the human genome has done for them - and the hope this remarkable project offers all of us.
