Human protein gene number: unabridged version

This is the long (13K) pre-acceptance version of " Has the yo-yo stopped? An assessment of human protein-coding gene number" (PMID:15174140). It was written in 2004 but, despite the referees comment ("this was the longest paper I have ever had to review") I suggest a lot of the detailed argumentation, purged for the re-submission, are still relevant to this theme and may be of interest. Note that, with UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot currently at 20,254 even I had over estimated.