There are differences between everyone’s genome, so when the human genome was mapped, who were they basing it off of?
In: 99
The answer you get from NCBI is that the reference genome is “pooled” from a number of men. What this means in ELI5 terms is that they mixed DNA from a lot of people together before they sequenced it. Once they mixed them together, it wouldn’t be possible to figure out which gene sequence came from which guy.
As far as who these men are…. back in the day it was a bit of a sport in the genetics field to accuse anyone and everyone of being such an egomaniac as to put himself in the pool. I’d not believe any claims that anyone specifically is in the pool, but it’s definitely not Albert Einstein or anyone famous – it’s probably a bunch of genetics guys.
But hey if you’re in the database now, you can pull up the 1000 Genomes browser and see what the most common sequence is for people from other ethnicities!
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