Genomics Part 1 - The Human Genome Project: An Introduction

The Human Genome Project (HGP), the world’s largest collaborative biological project, has helped humanity decode the human gene. The international scientific research project was started in 1984 with the aim to determine the sequence of the nucleotide base pairs that make up the human DNA. The project has helped in identifying and mapping all the genes of the human genome, from both physical and functional standpoints.

The HGP remains the world's largest collaborative biological project. The idea was picked up by the US government in 1984 when the planning had started. The project was formally launched in 1990 and was declared complete in 2000. The funding for the project came from the US government through its National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as many other groups all over the world.

The US-based Celera Corporation, or Celera Genomics, too formally launched a parallel project in 1998.

Most of the government-sponsored gene sequencing was performed in just 20 universities and research centres in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, Spain and China.

However, it was a missed opportunity for India. This was very unfortunate because in 1988, around the time the US had decided to invest, this project subsequently became a global one with the participation of China and Japan. A leading Indian scientist had then written a letter to the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi that India should also invest in the project. The scientist wrote that it would have cost Rs 300 crores ($ 0.15 billion) then, over a 15 year period, just a fraction of the cost in the US.

Although estimates suggested that the project would cost a total of $3 billion (at Rs 20 per dollar then, about Rs 6,000 crore) over this period, the project ended up costing less than expected, about $2.7 billion in FY 1991 dollars.