One of the largest scientific projects ever undertaken,  the Human Genome Project, is celebrating 20 years of its first publication this February, reported ABC. The project is credited for fundamentally changing genomics, medical research and collaboration in science. 

The project is said to be international and collaborative research program that aimed to map and completely understand all the genes of human beings, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute. All our genes collectively are known as our genome.  

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The first draft of the genome project was published in February 2001 by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium.

Over 2,800 researchers shared the authorship of the first draft, which was published with the sequence of the entire genome’s three billion base pairs some 90% complete.

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Following the publication, Francis Collins, then director of the National Human Genome Research Institute said that the genome could be considered a book with multiple uses.

Collins said, “It’s a history book – a narrative of the journey of our species through time. It’s a shop manual, with an incredibly detailed blueprint for building every human cell. And it’s a transformative textbook of medicine, with insights that will give health care providers immense new powers to treat, prevent and cure disease.”

The project has created tools that continue to inform about characterising the entire genomes of several other organisms used extensively in biological research like mice and flatworms.