Major gene map announced
The 1,000 Genomes Project will help scientists understand diseases
Tuesday, 22, Jan 2008 02:16
Genetic details of at least 1,000 people from around the world are to be sequenced to create the most detailed picture of human genetic variation to date.
Scientists involved in the international research consortium, which is creating the 'map', believe it will help them to understand more about the genetic factors involved in human health and disease.
Any two people are genetically 99 per cent the same, but the material that differs can help to explain individual differences in susceptibility to disease, response to drugs or reaction to environmental factors.
Data from the genetic map, known as the 1,000 Genomes Project, will be made available to scientists worldwide through freely-accessible public databases.
It is hoped the project will speed up the process of finding disease-related genetic variants, which will in turn speed up efforts to use genetic information to develop new strategies for diagnosing, treating and preventing common diseases.
People who allow their genetic information to be collated will remain anonymous and medical information will not be collected.
"The 1000 Genomes Project will examine the human genome at a level of detail that no one has done before," said Dr Richard Durbin of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, who is co-chair of the consortium.
"Such a project would have been unthinkable only two years ago. Today, thanks to amazing strides in sequencing technology, bioinformatics and population genomics, it is now within our grasp.
"So we are moving forward to build a tool that will greatly expand and further accelerate efforts to find more of the genetic factors involved in human health and disease."
Dr Francis Collins, director of National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), added: "Our existing databases do a reasonably good job of cataloguing variations found in at least ten per cent of the population.
"By harnessing the power of new sequencing technologies and novel computational methods, we hope to give biomedical researchers a genome-wide map of variation down to the one-per-cent level. This will change the way we carry out studies of genetic disease."