There's a school of thought which believes the past can be stripped of all its mystery by systematically chipping away at the smallest blocks. And perhaps, use that understanding to control the future.

Which is why, the human genome project (HGP)-an ambitious venture which at once promises a compellingly promising vision of the future, is ironically fraught with frightening possibilities.

There's a reason why. Every organism exists because it contains a set of complete instructions on what it ought to be and how it ought to evolve. This set of instructions, or the master blueprint, is called the genome.The human genome comprises tightly coiled threads of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and associated protein molecules organised into structures called chromosomes.

The explosive growth in medicine and associated research to understand life was aided by a massive fillip in the early twentieth century when Watson and Crick discovered how DNA is organised.

It essentially consists of two strands which resemble a twisted ladder. The sides of this twisted ladder are made of sugar and phosphate molecules. The strand, or the sides, at a more fundamental level, comprise repeating similar units called nucleotides. A specific sequence of these nucleotide bases are called the genes.

The sides are connected to each other by rungs, like in any other ladder. The rungs comprise nitrogen-containing chemicals called bases.

There are four different kinds of bases found in the DNA -- adenine (A), thymine (T), cystosine (T) and guanine (G).

Various permutations and combinations are possible between the bases and how it is linked to the sides. These permutations and combinations form the various DNA sequences and each sequence specifies the exact set of instructions to create a particular organism with its own unique traits.

Incidentally, the rungs that connect both sides of the ladder are held together by weak bonds forming base pairs. The size of a genome is stated as the total number of these base pairs (bp). In the case of the human genome, it works to roughly three billion bp.

These bps are organised into 24 million physically separate microscopic units called chromosomes and all genes are arranged along the chromosomes. Each human cell contains two sets of chromosomes-one set from each parent. The human genome project, originally planned as a 15-year project, is an international effort and started off formally in October 1990. At the current pace though, the project may be through by 2003.

What it essentially charts out to do is discover the approximately 100,000 human genes (genome) and determine the complete sequence of the three billion base pairs.

This is important for a very simple reason. Medical research proves that all diseases have a genetic component. For instance, a non-smoking individual may be more susceptible to cancer than a chain-smoker primarily because his genes says so.

For the non-smoker though, some trigger, perhaps passive smoking or, for that matter, some other variable in the environment will catalyse cancer far more easily than it would to the smoker. Point is, both are susceptible. It is the degree of susceptibility that matters.

And mapping the human genome will allow medical practitioners to pinpoint the errant gene with devastating accuracy and engineer the defect till it is rectified.

The kind of insights it can offer into the origin of humans are stunning. More pertinently, the future is mind-boggling. With little of the human body that will remain to be either understood or controlled, there is an increasingly real possibility that the current generation may be the last one which will have to die.

Because ultimately, even death is encoded in the genes. Coupled with cutting edge research in IT that promises to create backups of the brain that will allow an individual to live forever, at least in simulated conditions, science fiction seems obsolete. And debates on euthanasia passe.

These possibilities also dictate that the future will be complex and bring a new set of issues. What is to prevent a set of parents from knocking at medicine's door to determine the height of their progeny, or the colour of its eyes?

There are conceptual and philosophical implications. If genes determine behaviour, what kind of behaviour will be considered permissible? What are accepted levels of diversity? What is normal, what is disability and who decides?

Who owns the information, who ought to have access to such information, will employers and educational institutes use this information to figure out whether an individual ought to be accepted or not?

Even as these issues are contended and debated with, only one aspect remains clear. That biotechnology companies will be propelled into the stratosphere. Research will take a new dimension. And over the next couple of years, it may not be IT, but biotechnology that will be the know all and end all.