The
Human Genome Project (
HGP) was an international
scientific research project with the goal of determining the sequence of chemical
base pairs which make up human
DNA, and of identifying and mapping all of the
genes of the
human genome from both a physical and functional standpoint. It remains the world's largest collaborative biological project. The project was proposed and funded by the US government; planning started in 1984, got underway in 1990, and was declared complete in 2003. A parallel project was conducted outside of government by the
Celera Corporation, or Celera Genomics, which was formally launched in 1998. Most of the government-sponsored sequencing was performed in twenty
universities and research centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, and China.