Discovery science of the 20th century
Although discovery science about the types of plants and animals on Earth had its heyday in the 1800s, discovery science about life on a level that’s too small to see with the naked eye is ongoing.
One incredibly important project that employed modern discovery science is the Human Genome Project, which set out to map where each trait is found on the 46 human chromosomes.
Instead of traveling across the oceans to explore the world and catalog living things like the discovery scientists of 200 years ago, scientists from all over the world set out to explore the very tiny, but very complex, landscape of the 46 human chromosomes that contain the collection of all the genes found in humans.
Each of the 25,000 genes they located provides information about inherited traits.
The traits range from little things, such as whether you can curl your tongue or not, to truly important things, such as whether you have a genetic risk for developing breast cancer or cystic fibrosis.
By finding out where genes are located, scientists can turn their attention to using this newfound information to develop hypotheses about cures and gene therapies.