U.S. research effort initiated in 1990 by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health to analyze the DNA of human beings.
The project, intended to be completed in 15 years, proposed to identify the chromosomal location of every human gene , to determine each gene's precise chemical structure in order to show its function in health and disease, and to determine the precise sequence of nucleotides of the entire set of genes (the genome). Another project was to address the ethical, legal, and social implications of the information obtained. The information gathered will be the basic reference for research in human biology and will provide fundamental insights into the genetic basis of human disease. The new technologies developed in the course of the project will be applicable in numerous biomedical fields. In 2000 the government and the private corporation Celera Genomics jointly announced that the project had been virtually completed, five years ahead of schedule.