Scientists in London, Washington and Shenzhen on Tuesday jointly launched the 1,000 Genomes Project, which will involve sequencing the genomes of at least 1,000 people worldwide to create the most detailed and medically useful picture of human genetic variation yet.

The project's international research consortium includes scientists from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (WTSI) in England, the Beijing Genomics Institute, Shenzhen (BGI Shenzhen) in China, and the National Human Genome Research Institute in the United States and their academic networks.

The work will involving developing a new map of the human genome that will provide a view of biomedically relevant DNA variations at a resolution unmatched by current resources, a news release said.

Data from the project will be made available to the international scientific community through public databases.

The detailed map of human genetic variation will be available to researchers around the world seeking to relate genetic variation to particular diseases.

The research is also said to lay the groundwork for a new era of medicine, where people can routinely have their genomes sequenced to predict individual risks of disease and response to drugs.

"Such a project would have been unthinkable only two years ago," Richard Durbin of the WTSI, who is co-chairing the consortium, said.

"We are moving forward to build a tool that will greatly expand and further accelerate efforts to find more of the genetic factors involved in human health and disease."

In the first phase of the project, which will last about a year, researchers will conduct three trials and the results will be used to decide how to most efficiently and effectively produce a detailed map of human genetic variation.

During its two-year production phase, the project will deliver sequence data at an average rate of about 8.2 billion bases per day, the equivalent of more than two human genomes every 24 hours.

"At 6 trillion DNA bases, the 1,000 Genomes Project will generate more sequence data over its three-year course than has been deposited into public DNA databases over the past 25 years," Gil McVean of Oxford University, one of the co-chairs of the consortium's analysis group, said.

"Once up and running, the project will generate more sequences in two days than what was added to databases all last year," he said.

Among the populations whose DNA will be sequenced in the genomes project are the Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria; Japanese in Tokyo; Chinese in Beijing; Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe; Luhya in Webuye, Kenya; Maasai in Kinyawa, Kenya; Toscani in Italy; Gujarati Indians in Houston; Chinese in metropolitan Denver; those of Mexican ancestry in Los Angeles; and those of African ancestry in the southwestern US.

The samples will be sourced from volunteer donors, who will be anonymous and will not have any medical information collected on them, the consortium said.

Wang Jun, deputy director of BGI Shenzhen, which mapped the first East Asian gene, said its participation in the project places China's research on genes and related medical fields among the most advanced in the world.

"It will greatly encourage the research of genomic medicine in China.

"The research results will have significant impact on China's medical development and will definitely nurture the growth of new, related industries," Wang said.

Editor: Yan