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by haberman 3652 days ago
Thanks! By the way, when you say "you can download the human genome", presumably this is the genome of a specific individual whose DNA was sequenced? What person is that?
2 comments

no, it is a consensus sequence determined by sequencing the genomes of several individuals. i do not know how many individuals were sequenced for hg38, but hg37 was derived from 13 individuals according to [1].

genomic regions with higher variability between individuals are annotated separately and are not represented in the main chromosomal sequence, but can be aligned to it as such.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_genome

You can download Craig Venter's genome here:

http://hgdownload.soe.ucsc.edu/goldenPath/venter1/bigZips/

However, the human "reference" genome (the updated main product of the Human Genome Project) is a patchwork of about 20 donors' genomes. Many(most?) of the donors are anonymous volunteers from Buffalo, NY, USA.

http://hgdownload.soe.ucsc.edu/goldenPath/hg38/bigZips/