The Wellcome Trust, which funds the Sanger Centre, is to release 48m of earmarked funding early to increase the speed of its contribution to the Human Genome Project. The Project will forever change how we understand the human body and disease. The scientific community want this data immediately as it plays a vital role in understanding the very basis of life, health and disease. Between then and now, any new data made available is put on the Internet as soon as it becomes available. But in a sense, it is only the beginning.
Scientists only understand the function of a relatively tiny fraction of our genes at present.
The Sanger Centre and its US counterpart, the Genome Sequencing Centre in St Louis, Missouri, recently completed the genetic sequence of the worm C. Elegans. It is the most complex genome sequenced so far with 19,000 genes. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.