The Human Genome Project Finished Two Years Early

Big science projects usually run late. The Human Genome Project did not. The U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute describes the project, carried out from 1990 to 2003, as one of the most ambitious and important scientific endeavors in human history. Its goal was to read the human genome, determining the exact order of the bases in DNA, the As, Cs, Gs and Ts. According to the institute, partly because of a deliberate focus on developing technology, the project ultimately exceeded its initial goals, doing so by 2003, two years ahead of its originally projected 2005 completion. The sequence produced in 2003 accounted for over 90 percent of the human genome. In the United States the work was funded by the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health, and the projected cost was 3 billion dollars over 15 years.