An international consortium announced today (Jan 22) a plan to sequence at least 1000 genomes from people all over the world. "The 1000 Genome Project" seeks to assemble the most comprehensive map yet of human genetic variation. The project will be supported by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England, the Beijing Genomics Institute, Shenzhen (BGI Shenzhen) in China, and the National Institutes of Health's National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).

The 1000 Genome Project will build on data gathered by the haplotype map (HapMap) project, compiling a catalog of genetic variants that are present at 1 percent or greater frequency in the human population across most of the genome, and down to 0.5 percent or lower within genes. Participating institutions include the Sanger Institute, BGI Shenzhen, and NHGRI-funded labs in universities throughout the US. Ultimately, researchers expect to churn out sequence data at an average rate of about 8.2 billion bases, or about two human genomes, per day. The genomic data will be available to the public through the National Center for Biotechnology Information's and the European Bioinformatics Institute's online databases, and organizers expect the project to cost between $30 million and $50 million.