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Published online 22 January 2008 | Nature 451, 378-379 (2008) | doi:10.1038/451378b
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International genome project launched
Three-year study will capture variation in 1,000 people.
A much-anticipated international project to sequence the entire genomes of 1,000 people was launched on Tuesday, but some question whether the three-year project is ambitious enough in its scope.
The '1,000 Genomes Project' will create a highly detailed reference map of human genetic variation and is the largest such project announced to date.
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How is ethnicity defined in this project? What are the ethnic groups who will participate in the project?
The key to credibility with this kind of study is the extent to which the sample is representative of the population it claims to represent. So, what we want to be able to account for is any selection bias in recruiting the participants, their subsequent defection rate once enrolled [and whether that pattern is random or biased], and detectable interactions with confounds and any anomalies in the underlying variance of the sample. In short, can the authors, when done, make credible claims for effect sizes from the data? 1000 participants is in principle a large enough sample to make credible claims about a large population. Bob Sweeney Memphis, TN
From S.Nandakumar,oxford astro laser physics,uk Please note that the informations gathered from palm prints especially Health line gradient cutting the life line to evaluate the death genes ced 3,4 rates based on Y shifts synchronisation defects will be of most influencing and immense value on people for genome research applications along with stem cell mouse injections ,femto laser biostimulations,cloning technology to complement the gap on pre and post blastocytes applications.Some more informations based on date of birth from prenatal seven days blastocytes to adult blastosytes renormalisation at birth as a second step at the time of birth may be observed in this line of research.kindly get more informations from me in this aspect.Thank you
From S.Nandakumar,oxford astro laser physics,uk Please note that the informations gathered from palm prints especially Health line gradient cutting the life line to evaluate the death genes ced 3,4 rates based on Y shifts synchronisation defects will be of most influencing and immense value on people for genome research applications along with stem cell mouse injections ,femto laser biostimulations,cloning technology to complement the gap on pre and post blastocytes applications.Some more informations based on date of birth from prenatal seven days blastocytes to adult blastosytes renormalisation at birth as a second step at the time of birth may be observed in this line of research.kindly get more informations from me in this aspect.Thank you
What is the objective of the 1,000 Genomes Project?
From Mehboob-ur-Rahman, NIBGE Faisalabad Pakistan In this project, please illustrate the criteria of selecting the 1000 people.
There seem to be a lot of questions about who will be sequenced in the project. For the pilot phase, all the partcipants will be chosen from a pool of people who already took part in the HapMap study. That study included the following ethnic groups: Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria; Japanese in Tokyo; Chinese in Beijing; Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe; Luhya in Webuye, Kenya; Maasai in Kinyawa, Kenya; Toscani in Italy; Gujarati Indians in Houston; Chinese in metropolitan Denver; people of Mexican ancestry in Los Angeles; and people of African ancestry in the southwestern United States. After the pilot phase, the project organizers may recruit more participants who were not in the HapMap, but it's too early to know. You can find a lot more information about the project at www.1000genomes.org
The name of the project is rather misleading, and clearly has successfully misled the author of this report. The 1000 Genomes Project will NOT in fact be sequencing 1,000 entire genomes. Rather, it will be sequencing six entire genomes with high accuracy and 180 entire genomes with low accuracy. The "1000 Genomes" refers to the final stage of the project, in which more than 1,000 people will have a relatively small proportion of their genome - protein-coding regions from 1,000 to 2,000 genes - sequenced with high accuracy. The precise fraction of the genome that will actually be sequenced in this final stage is still unclear, but it will probably constitute only a few percent of the total genome.
I was indeed left high and dry after reading the report, for it was an incomplete one with almost no information on population selection (other than HapMap), number of individuals who will be sequenced in full and in part etc. Thanks to Erika Check and Daniel MacArthur who came to the readers' resue and provided these much needed details so quickly.
We have been all along propagating that genome is genetic program. The concepts of genetic program and molecular gene are chemistry based. We say the DNA structure encodes genetic information and it is this information which is responsible for the biological activities or life of an organism. If DNA structure is genetic information certainly that information will also be in tact in the dead body. But strangely the body does not function. Can a chemical structure lose its information? Obviously biological program is not constituted by a chemical structure. It is nonphysical corroborating the view of Wilhelm Johannsen who coined the term gene in 1911. It is like the program stored on computer disk. An organism is a natural biocomputer. The body structures constitute the hardware and the biological program stored on chromosome which is the storage device of the cell forms the software. The manifestation of the execution of this program is the phenomenon of life. The deletion of this program from the body cells is death. A dead body is like a computer without software. Our computers also have life or artificial life as they run on man made programs. More information is available in my book The Computer Universe published in 2006 by Adam Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi, India. By chasing a chemical trail to locate the source of biological information, biologists are trying to find a hardware solution for a software problem. It is high time we realized this error. With molecular gene concept entailing a chemical structure constituting the biological information, we will never be able to understand and define life. The concept is certainly a hindrance to understanding the phenomenon of life. Through DNA technology we are changing a hardware component and not software as is generally thought. It is like changing the typeface of an electronic typewriter connected to a computer and expecting that it will print a meaningful word. Rarely it may print but most of the times it prints meaningless words. P.A. Wahid
Just wanted to clarify something in Daniel MacArthur's comment, which is not entirely accurate. The sequencing of 1,000-2,000 protein-coding genes in 1,000 people is one of three *pilot* projects in the 1,000 Genomes project. In the final phase of the project, all 1,000 genomes *will* be sequenced at low coverage, according to Lisa Brooks, a program director at NHGRI, who wrote in an email to me: "The exact final project design will depend on the data from the 3 pilots...but we expect that in the full project about 1000 samples will be lightly (2X) sequenced across the entire genome, and these 1000 samples plus possibly additional samples would be sequenced more in the gene regions."
Yet another mindless data-collecting project that will give the term "junk DNA" a new meaning. Junk DNA is namely not in our genomes -- it is sitting in huge sequence databases, badly annotated and uninterpreted. It is high time we returned to hypothesis-driven research.
Sus scorfa comments that 1,000 genome project is an yet another data-collecting project, and that we should now return to hypothesis-driven research. I completely disagree with this. Consider the recent high throughput genome-wide association studies in type 2 diabetes, for example. It is important to note that these huge data-collecting studies have indeed been able to identify a couiple of disease susceptibility genes. Compare this with earlier hypothesis driven, candidate gene based search for disease susceptibility genes. This approach has largely been unsuccessful. Had we not generated large-scale data, we would have kept publishing association studies with imaginary candidate genes till infinity, without achieveing any tangible result (Of course, that would have fattened scientists' CVs to their benefit in promotion and assessment). In fact, we should be thankful to those who developed these high throughput technologies. These data-collecting project actually provides us the material to generate hypotheses. What are we going to test, if there are no hypotheses in the first place. Biology is too complex to allow selection of candidate genes by reading some papers.
@sharma:- "Consider the recent high throughput genome-wide association studies" -- yes, these can discover correlations. But this is not enough. Did you know that consumption of ice cream leads to increased criminality? They do correlate (both are at higher levels during the summer months). :-) Unfortunately this project will provide even less insight, as no disease-relevant phenotypic information will be collected from the donors AFAIK.
@Scorfa:- First of all I gave example of disease not because 1,000 genome will provide any data on that but in response to your declaration "Yet another mindless data-collecting project ...". Regarding the assertion made about ice-cream consumption and criminality (I don't know in which scientific journal it was published), it must admit that it could not have been uncovered without hypothesis-driven research (because both happen in summer months). And it must have required a very high level of creative thinking.
Understanding Human Genome Variation But Do Not Play the Human Genome Number Game-------------- When many people hoped that The Human Genome Project (of one 'Human') will bring a 'Book of Life' and even win a Nobel Prize, I said, No way. That Human Genome will be just one page of a billion-individual human genome chapter and that just chapter may be just one of the million-species Life Book. Human differences are known to exist in phenotypic characters as well as genetic features such as 'genes'. Do we really need to sequence the whole genomes in order to convince us this? Why just 1000 individuals or 10000 individuals? How to sample different humans in order to make a fair representation of Human Being? Before we draw any strategic plan to find human variations which may mainly reflect the differences among different genealogical lineages, would it be wise for us to go back to check whether or not our understanding on life origin and evolution is correct (http://im1.biz/Evolution.htm)? Or should we be surprised that some purely "white" human being would have a significant amount of "black" DNA (http://im1.biz/Watson.htm) if we still believe that all life originated from the same last common ancestor and we human beings are all made by the same human ancestor couple? ----------------------- Shi V. Liu (SVL@logibio.com)
I wonder if the new project will make any benefits from the HapMap experience. Apparently sampling will commence on the same HapMap populations, despite criticisms of poor representation, particularly of the immense diversity in Africa. Suggestions have been made previously that population groups like the Hawsa may be more informative, compared to the Bantu derived Yoruba, more so because of the rich migration history of the Hawsa and their greater haplotype diversity.
The DNA samples from 1000 individuals will be helpful to know the genetic variation between individuals,I would like to ask, what is the criteria for selecting those 1000 individuals? Is it random selection? or specific populations you will be selected? As we know that the history of living conditions of each individual is essential and very important.
Still please clear about ethnic groups, and criteria for selection of individulas.I will appreciate if you mention objectives of study. Thanks to Daniel MacArthur for kind information Bashir Ahmad Quaid i Azam University Islamabad Pakistan
Erika, Thanks for your response. You are correct that the limited sequencing of 1,000 individuals I described in my comment is only intended as a pilot phase, before further analysis (the scope of which is still unclear) is performed. I apologise for any confusion I inadvertently caused with my comment.