Human Genome Project, The

Definition

The Human Genome Project was an international research project that mapped and stored all 3.2 billion base pairs in the human genome.

Introduction

The Human Genome Project (HGP), successfully completed in 2003, was an international collaboration that accurately sequenced and mapped the entire euchromatic portion of the human genome. Two separate drafts of the human genome DNA sequences were published in 2001 as a consequence of the race between Celera Genomic’s privately funded and the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium’s publicly funded initiatives. Their goals were to sequence all the nucleotides of the human genome, create databases to store this information, and develop tools to analyze this massive amount of information. Completing the project required collaborators from the UK, France, Japan, Italy, Canada, and Germany and costs approximately $3 billion (International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium 2004).

History and Significance

In 1986, over 30...