360Scientists complete the Human Genome Project
On 14 April 2003, scientists announced the completion of the Human Genome Project, a 13-year international effort to read the roughly 3 billion letters of human DNA. It found that people have only about 20,000 genes. The map has transformed medicine, and reading a genome now costs a tiny fraction of the original price.
DNA carries the instructions for building and running the human body, written in a code of four chemical letters. The full set of instructions is called the genome.
In 1990, scientists in the United States, Britain, Japan, France, Germany and China began the Human Genome Project, a plan to read all of it. A private company, Celera Genomics, later ran a rival effort.
A first draft was announced in June 2000. On 14 April 2003, the project announced that it had completed the sequence, covering about 99% of the genome to a high accuracy, two years ahead of schedule.
One surprise was how few genes people have: about 20,000, not the 100,000 many had expected. Researchers made the data freely available to scientists everywhere.
The first genome cost about $3 billion to read. Today a whole genome can be read in a day for a few hundred dollars, helping doctors find causes of rare diseases and choose cancer treatments. The last gaps in the sequence were filled in 2022.
- 1990
- The Human Genome Project begins
- June 2000
- A working draft is announced
- 14 April 2003
- The project is completed
- 2022
- The final gaps are filled
Sources: National Human Genome Research Institute · Wellcome Sanger Institute · Britannica.