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Sequencing the human genome
At the beginning of the 1990s, the international scientific community launched a flagship genetics project of exceptional magnitude in view to sequencing the complete human genome, i.e. the equivalent in number of characters of 2,000 books each containing 500 pages. Twenty institutions around the world grouped into an international consortium and shared the work involved.
In 2004, 14 years later and three billion base pairs of human DNA sequenced, these works performed in collaboration at international scale resulted in the sequenced version of the human genome complete and precise to within 99.99%. This "catalogue" is now freely available to the researchers of the entire world.
The progress accomplished in sequencing during the 1990s, and the renewed financial support received from supervisory institutions and philanthropic actions made it possible to achieve this goal two years ahead of the date initially scheduled.
See also : sequence, sequencing, Cancer genome sequencing – the ICGC program