1000 GENOMES: A World of Variation

Capturing roughly 95 % of the common genetic variationsthat can be detected among the Earth’s 6.9 billion individuals1 is no small task. But in the report2 published last fall of pilot data from the 1000 Genomes Project, researchers attempted to do just that and generated the most comprehensive map ever compiled of human genetic variation. Launched in 2008, the 1000 Genomes Project has set its sights on describing more than 95 % of variants that occur in as few as 1%, or even fewer, of the world’s people. Five major population groups are targeted—West African, Euro-pean, American, and East and South Asian. “To understand a disease fully, we need to do much more extensive studies than any one such analysis should do, ” says Aravinda Chakravarti, PhD, director of the Center for Com-plex Disease Genomics at Johns Hopkins ’ McKusick-