I’d be willing to bet that most of the U.S. population above the age of 35 has at least heard of the Human Genome Project. They might not be able to tell you much about the specifics of what it was, but they probably know that it was important (though they probably couldn’t articulate why) and that the goal was to sequence the human genome (whatever that is). After all, it was one of the top science, technology, and medicine stories of the 1990s and early 2000s; at the time, the press often compared it to the 1969 Apollo moon landing.

A smaller number of people would be able to talk a bit more about what a genome is — the seemingly endless string of letters (A’s, C’s, T’s, and G’s) that is essentially the assembly instructions for the human body. They might remember a few of the big names

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