The first in-depth look into the human genome shows it is much more complicated than the clear blueprint of how to make a human that scientists had hoped for.
Instead of having DNA packed with tens of thousands of new genes that make people different from mice, fruit flies and worms, it seems we have relatively few genes - just 30,000 or 40,000, researchers will announce later today.
Earlier estimates had ranged from 60,000 to 100,000.
The two separate teams of scientists, who say they were shocked and awed by their findings, say this means that genes may not be the be-all and end-all of what makes an organism.
They know that each gene expresses or controls a protein. And they now know that the proteins must mix and match in ways more important than previously thought.
But they also know they are going to have to go back and dig through the trash can of the genome - the so-called junk DNA that many had believed played no important role at all.
"I call it the alleged junk," Eric Lander, head of genome sequencing at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in a telephone interview. "The junk is amazing." Mr Lander, whose institute, part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, played a large role in the publicly funded Human Genome Project, said researchers will be taking a long hard look at the junk.
When the two efforts, public and private, announced the first step, the sequence of the human genome last June, they knew little more than that there were 3.1 billion base pairs of DNA in the human genome.
Reuters