The resource built by the 1,000 Genomes Project will shed light on the genetic roots of complex diseases and suggest ways to treat them – as well as informing studies of human evolution.

 

The results of the 1,000 Genomes Project are published on Thursday in Nature, and contain the full DNA sequences of 1,092 people drawn from 14 populations around the world, including Europe, the Americas, East Asia and Africa. The pilot results from the project were unveiled in 2010, and the genomes of 179 people published to show that the technology and methods were robust.

The five-year project, which cost around $120m (£75m), is an international collaboration between scientists, charities and companies to map the full diversity of human DNA. It takes advantage of the rising speed and falling costs of sequencing machines. 

 

The first human genome, published in 2003, took more than a decade to complete, but the 1,000 Genomes Project completed the bulk of its sequencing work in less than a year. A genome can nowadays be fully sequenced in just a few days.