And you thought unlocking the secrets of DNA was mind-bending. Scientists are working on a project more ambitious than the human genome, to produce a 3D "Google Map" of the human body that will let them zoom in on any part of the human body right down to the levels of individual cells and genes, writes Jonathan Leake.
The project would allow scientists to visualise healthy organs, tissues and cells,and compare them with diseased ones, to see what conditions such as arthritis, cancer and heart disease actually look like in a living human body and, potentially, how they begin. It means studying the body's 30 trillion cells to identify how many cell types there are.
The human body contains about 200 different types of