A researcher who has a background in biology and genetics, understands how animal cells are structured, is knowledgeable about the complex physical and chemical processes that affect cells, and is knowledgeable about the structure and function of animal/human DNA has a much better chance of discovering information coded in a map of the human genome than a person lacking this knowledge. The researcher who knows what the map represents can utilize his own knowledge and his ability to use and adapt the knowledge from years of research provided by fellow biologists and genetecists. He, therefore has a wealth of work related to how the actual components of genes behave and interact to base speculations or hypotheses about the structure of genes and interactions. However, it is true that any person can discover some of the information the genome carries just by looking at a map of it. For instance, a person who knows that different colors represent different bases will be able to differentiate the bases from one another on the map. Still, a person who knows next to nothing about what she is looking at won't be likely to discover much that is novel, useful, or interesting. Discovering new information depends partly on using previously held knowledge used for creating the map in the first place, making a hypothesis about what you expect to find in the map, figuring out the most likely way it might exist, and then looking for it.

Consider how scientists became able to identify genetic information coded in any strand of human DNA. In 1953, scientists James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure and composition of DNA. They represented it as a ladder that had been coiled and twisted. If this ladder is fixed in time and space, uncoiled, untwisted, and split in half, a person can see that each "rung" of the ladder is made of a pair of chemical bases: adenine (A) and thymine (T), or guanine (G) and cytosine (C). These bases form complementary pairs: A and T, and G and C. When the base pairs are organized sequentially along a strand of deoxyribose, they form physically separate molecules called chromosomes that range in length from about 50 million to 250 million base pairs. A strand of human DNA is arranged into 24 distinct chromosomes. Each chromosome can be further subdivided into genes-- specific base sequences that encode instructions on how to make proteins, and serve as the basic physical and functional units of heredity.

Once the structure and substance of a potential information carrier such as DNA is determined, a person can find out how those defining properties are significant. In October 1990, researchers began mapping the human genome- a complete set of human DNA-- to learn more about what its structure has to do with the hereditary physical characteristics that make a human being what she is. The process of mapping the genome includes identifying each gene and determining its individual sequence of chemical base pairs. This was/is accomplished by taking chromosomes, breaking them down into smaller pieces, using these pieces to create new fragments (each of which differs in length by one base), separating each fragment, and then recreating the original sequence of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs for each generated short piece by identifying the final base at the end of each fragment. Once the sequences are recreated, they are analyzed and color-coded. Then computers are used to assemble the short sequences into long, continuous stretches that are analyzed for errors, gene-coding regions, and other characteristics. The finished sequence is the map of the human genome.

The working draft of the map of the human genome was completed June 26, 2000. The official map was completed April 2003. Now that the genome is mapped, scientists can look for the different kinds of information this map carries and represents. Information is contained in particular sequences, orderings, and groupings of base pairs, their activity or inactivity, their interactions with other chemicals (?) and external factors, their behavior, and their individual functions. So far, researchers have discovered the quantity of genes and the total number of base pairs that comprise these genes, and thus the human genome: the map of all the genetic information contained in a strand of DNA.