The Wall Street Journal-20080123-DNA Project to Map Human Variations
Return to: The_Wall_Street_Journal-20080123
DNA Project to Map Human Variations
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Any two people may be roughly 99% identical at the genetic level. But the small differences are what tantalize scientists, and now they plan to map the DNA of 1,000 people world- wide to examine human genetic variation.
The goal is to create a catalog of these differences, the most detailed yet, which scientists could use to find variations that explain why some people get certain illnesses.
The project, announced yesterday, will be a collaboration of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Britain, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and China's Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen.
The Human Genome Project offered the first map of the 25,000 human genes in 2003, based on a mix of DNA. The new project will use DNA donated by anonymous volunteers.
