This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • World Health  • Genetics, Other  • Statistics and Research Methods  • Alert me on articles by topic

Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2008;299(7):755.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

An international research consortium plans to sequence the genomes of at least 1000 individuals from around the world to create a map of "biomedically relevant" human genetic variation with far greater resolution than is currently available. Major funding support for the project will be provided by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England; The Beijing Genomics Institute, in Shenzhen, China; and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in Bethesda, Md.

Using recently developed resources such as the HapMap (a catalog of common genetic variants called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs), scientists have discovered more than 100 regions of the genome that contain genetic variants that contribute to such common disorders as diabetes, coronary artery disease, and certain cancers. The 1000 Genome Project will "increase the sensitivity of disease discovery efforts across the genome five-fold and within gene regions at least 10-fold," said NHGHRI director Francis . . . [Full Text of this Article]