The Human Genome Project Is Completed

Setting the scene

The Human Genome Project began in 1990 as an international consortium racing a private effort by Celera Genomics; Francis Collins led the public mapping of three billion base pairs while Craig Venter's team used whole-genome shotgun sequencing.

What happened

The Human Genome Project was declared complete in April 2003, with Collins and Venter jointly announcing a draft covering roughly ninety-nine percent of the euchromatic human genome at the White House alongside President George W. Bush.

Why it still matters

Personalized medicine hopes followed through pharmacogenomics, cancer profiling, and CRISPR; ethical questions about ancestry testing, gene patenting, and inequality in who benefits from genomic science remain central to twenty-first-century bioethics.

Background

Personalized medicine hopes followed.