The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA – both to map the exact location of the genes on chromosomes and to sequence all of the genes of the human genome, and took place during 1990 to 2003.

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HGP formally launched in 1990 in the U.S., and its formative days dated back to the mid-80s: Robert Sinsheimer（1920-）, then chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz, first proposed to sequence human genome in 1985, and the idea initially suffered from public distrust. But in 1986, Charles DeLisi of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) decided to begin funding research into genome mapping and sequencing. In 1988, a special committee of the U.S. National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences recommended the initiation of the Human Genome Project, calling for a 15-year project with funding of about $200 million a year. The genome project received a significant boost in late 1988 when Nobel Laureate James Watson stepped forward to lead a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) component of the effort. And DOE and NIH set the clock for the official initiation of HGP to October 1, 1990.

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Though HGP began as a project specifically in the U.S., it gradually included more countries and stimulated international cooperation. In 1996, the UK, France, Germany, and Japan joined in HPG at the 1st “International Strategic Meeting on Human Genome Sequencing” (1st ISMHGS, also called“Bermuda Meeting”) in the February of 1996. The meeting also set the Bermuda Principles that mandates daily release of HGP-funded DNA sequences into the public domain. China, as the last participant and the only developing country, joined in at the 5th Strategic Meeting on August 31, 1999, and was committed to sequencing a region of approximately 30 centimorgan (one centimorgan corresponds to roughly 1 million base pairs in the human genome) on the tip of the short arm of chromosome 3. The part was then estimated to account for about 1% of the entire human genome, thus called the “1% Project,” or the “Chinese Chapter of the Human Genome Sequence,” or the “Beijing Region” of the human genome (shown in picture above). China accomplished sequencing the region within half a year in April 2000.

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HGP was expected to take fifteen years but ended two years earlier on April 14, 2003, with full succuss. With retrospection, the project can be roughly periodized into three stages: 1. From 1990 to September 1994, HGP researchers sketched out the human genome map. 2. On June 26, 2000, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium announced that it completed a working draft of the sequence of the human genome. 3. The international consortium continued to complete the human genome sequence at the highest quality in a chromosome-by-chromosome manner, and in April 2003, the researchers claimed to have finished 99% of gene-containing part of human sequence with more than 99.99% accuracy. In addition, HGP researchers also finished genome sequences of E. coli, S. cerevisiae, C. elegans, D. melanogaster, plus whole-genome drafts of several others, including C. briggsae, D. pseudoobscura, mouse and rat.

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HGP’s success marked a significant step of genetic technology and international cooperation. One benefit from HGP lies in improving drugs:  Before about the 1980s, drugs were found largely by serendipity – their molecular and protein targets were usually unknown. HGP reveals roughly 20,000 proteins as potential drug targets. Nowadays, the majority of successful drugs do not directly target individual disease genes; instead, they target proteins one or two interactions away. For example, large-scale screens of existing drugs that could be repurposed for use against COVID-19 found that only 1% of promising candidates targeted a viral protein — the majority were drugs that modulated human proteins.

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Rather than draws a glorious conclusion, HGP cracks a new path and encourages genetic researches and technologies. For instance, while HGP only takes a few volunteers as samples, Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), an on-going project, intends to study individuals from all kinds of populations. Along with a better understanding of human genome, gene editing technology becomes exiting. The 2020 Noble Prize of Chemistry went to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna for their pioneering work on gene editing tool CRISPR–Cas9 in 2012. But gene editing tool is a double-edged sword and can be controversial especially when it comes to human. For example, He Jiankui, a Chinese scientist, illegally carried out his own experiments on human embryos in 2018 and was put to jail in 2019.

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When Gregor Mendel was hybridizing peas in the garden more than a hundred years before, he must not have thought of himself as the “father of genetics”. Now it is safe to claim that genetics has enabled us to examine God’s creatures in such a close way for the first time. However, technology is never limited to a technical dimension; gene editing technology seems to have developed too fast to be regulated by current ethics and laws. The HGP has inevitably directed us to gaze back at ourselves, and in Jorge Luis Borges’s words: “I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.”