The 1000 Genomes Project to Study Human Genetic Variation to Support Disease Studies

The 1000 Genomes Project, led by an international research consortium, will
sequence the genomes of at least a thousand people from around the world to create the most detailed and medically useful picture to date of human genetic variation.

The international research consortium draws support from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England, the Beijing Genomics Institute, Shenzhen (BGI Shenzhen) in China and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The other participants include from as many as 35 Institutions such as the

Sanger Institute, BGI Shenzhen and National Human Genome Research Institute’s Large-Scale Sequencing Network,  Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; the Washington University Genome Sequencing Centre at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; and the Human Genome Sequencing Centre at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. European Bioinformatics Institute near Cambridge, UK, and the National Centre for Biotechnology Information in the USA

Using standard DNA sequencing technologies, the effort would likely cost more than £250 million. However, leaders of the 1000 Genomes Project expect the costs to fall to as little as £15 million by the use of new sequencing technologies.

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.

Among the populations whose DNA will be sequenced in the 1000 Genomes Project are: Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria; Japanese in Tokyo; Chinese in Beijing; Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe; Luhya in Webuye, Kenya; Maasai in Kinyawa, Kenya; Toscani in Italy; Gujarati Indians in Houston; Chinese in metropolitan Denver; people of Mexican ancestry in Los Angeles; and people of African ancestry in the southwestern United States.