Changes

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<p><strong><span class="mw-headline"><font size="4">History of the field</font></span></strong></p>

<p><font size="3">In 1972, Walter Fiers and his team at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of the University of Ghent (Ghent, Belgium) were the first to determine the sequence of a gene: the gene for Bacteriophage MS2 coat protein.<sup id="_ref-0" class="reference">[1]</sup> In 1976, the team determined the complete nucleotide-sequence of bacteriophage MS2-RNA.<sup id="_ref-1" class="reference">[2]</sup> The first DNA-based genome to be sequenced in its entirety was that of bacteriophage &Phi;-X174; (5,368 bp), sequenced by Frederick Sanger in 1977<sup id="_ref-2" class="reference">[3]</sup>. The first free-living organism to be sequenced was that of <em>Haemophilus influenzae</em> (1.8 Mb) in 1995, and since then genomes are being sequenced at a rapid pace. A rough draft of the human genome was completed by Sanger centre and the Human Genome Project in early 2001.</font></p>

<p><font size="3">As of September 2007, the complete sequence was known of about 1879 viruses <sup id="_ref-3" class="reference">[4]</sup>, 577 bacterial species and roughly 23 eukaryote organisms, of which about half are fungi. <sup id="_ref-4" class="reference">[5]</sup> Most of the bacteria whose genomes have been completely sequenced are problematic disease-causing agents, such as <em>Haemophilus influenzae</em>. Of the other sequenced species, most were chosen because they were well-studied model organisms or promised to become good models. Yeast (<em>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</em>) has long been an important model organism for the eukaryotic cell, while the fruit fly <em>Drosophila melanogaster</em> has been a very important tool (notably in early pre-molecular genetics). The worm <em>Caenorhabditis elegans</em> is an often used simple model for multicellular organisms. The zebrafish <em>Brachydanio rerio</em> is used for many developmental studies on the molecular level and the flower <em>Arabidopsis thaliana</em> is a model organism for flowering plants. The Japanese pufferfish (<em>Takifugu rubripes</em>) and the spotted green pufferfish (<em>Tetraodon nigroviridis</em>) are interesting because of their small and compact genomes, containing very little non-coding DNA compared to most species. <sup id="_ref-5" class="reference">[6]</sup> <sup id="_ref-6" class="reference">[7]</sup> The mammals dog (<em>Canis familiaris</em>), <sup id="_ref-7" class="reference">[8]</sup> brown rat (<em>Rattus norvegicus</em>), mouse (<em>Mus musculus</em>), and chimpanzee (<em>Pan troglodytes</em>) are all important model animals in medical research.</font></p>