The 1000 Genomes Project

The 1000 Genomes Project, launched in January 2008, is an international research effort to establish by far the most detailed catalogue of human genetic variation. Scientists plan to sequence the genomes of at least one thousand anonymous participants from a number of different ethnic groups within the next three years, using newly developed faster and less expensive sequencing technologies.
"The 1000 Genomes Project will examine the human genome at a level of detail that no one has done before," said Richard Durbin, Ph.D., 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."
"This new project will increase the sensitivity of disease discovery efforts across the genome five-fold and within gene regions at least 10-fold," said NHGRI Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.
The 1000 Genomes Project will map not only the single-letter differences in people's DNA, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), but also will produce a high-resolution map of larger differences in genome structure called structural variants. Structural variants are rearrangements, deletions or duplications of segments of the human genome. The importance of these variants has become increasingly clear with surveys completed in the past 18 months that show these differences in genome structure may play a role in susceptibility to certain conditions, such as mental retardation and autism.
"This project will examine the human genome in a detail that has never been attempted -- the scale is immense. At 6 trillion DNA bases, the 1000 Genomes Project will generate 60-fold more sequence data over its three-year course than have been deposited into public DNA databases over the past 25 years," said Gil McVean, Ph.D., of the University of Oxford in England, one of the co-chairs of the consortium's analysis group. "In fact, when up and running at full speed, this project will generate more sequence in two days than was added to public databases for all of the past year."

When is genome project finished ?

When sequencing a genome, there are usually regions that are difficult to sequence (often regions with highly repetitive DNA). Thus, 'completed' genome sequences are rarely ever complete, and terms such as 'working draft' or 'essentially complete' have been used to more accurately describe the status of such genome projects. Even when every base pair of a genome sequence has been determined, there are still likely to be errors present because DNA sequencing is not a completely accurate process. It could also be argued that a complete genome project should include the sequences of mitochondria and (for plants) chloroplasts as these organelles have their own genomes.

It is often reported that the goal of sequencing a genome is to obtain information about the complete set of genes in that particular genome sequence. The proportion of a genome that encodes for genes may be very small (particularly in eukaryotes such as humans, where coding DNA may only account for a few percent of the entire sequence). However, it is not always possible (or desirable) to only sequence the coding regions separately. Also, as scientists understand more about the role of this noncoding DNA (often referred to as junk DNA)
(http://genomevolution.blogspot.com), it will become more important to have a complete genome sequence as a background to understanding the genetics and biology of any given organism.

In many ways genome projects do not confine themselves to only determining a DNA sequence of an organism. Such projects may also include gene prediction to find out where the genes are in a genome, and what those genes do. There may also be related projects to sequence ESTs or mRNAs to help find out where the genes actually are.