Q.(a) Mention any five salient features of Human Genome Project. OR

(a) The Human Genome Project fully sequenced human DNA and revealed a smaller-than-expected gene count with vast non-coding regions. (b) Preventing substance abuse relies on resisting peer pressure, open communication with trusted adults, avoiding risk situations, and timely professional help.

(a) The Human Genome Project, an international collaborative effort completed in the early 2000s, had several notable findings/features: it successfully determined the sequence of all approximately 3.1 billion base pairs that make up the human genome; contrary to earlier predictions of 80,000-1,40,000 genes, it revealed that the human genome contains only around 30,000 (later refined closer to ~20,000-25,000) protein-coding genes; it found that human genes vary enormously in size, averaging about 3,000 bases but ranging up to the largest known human gene, dystrophin, at 2.4 million bases; the project catalogued over 1.4 million locations of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) -- single base differences between individuals -- which are valuable for studying disease susceptibility, drug response, and human population/evolutionary history; and it revealed that less than 2 percent of the genome codes for proteins, with the remainder made up of various repetitive sequences and regions whose precise functions remain to be fully understood, showing that genome complexity is not simply proportional to the number of protein-coding genes. …