The Human Genome Project

  1: What is the public project for sequencing the human genome?
  2: Has the human genome been completely sequenced?
  3: How many genes do humans have?
  4: Why is it so difficult to find the genes in a human genome sequence?
  5: Where did the sequenced human DNA come from?
  6: Is the human genome “freely available”? If not, who owns it?
  7: Why was there a Human Genome Project What is its use?
  8: Who were the members of the international consortium What was the role of each of them?
  9: What was the French contribution to the Human Genome Project?
  10: How much did the Human Genome Project cost?
  11: With the end of the Human Genome Project, are the large sequencing centers still useful?

The total cost of the Human Genome Project is about 2.7 billion dollars (1991 fiscal year dollars), wherease it was projected to cost 3 billion dollars at the beginning of the project in 1990. This economy resulted from the considerable technological progress and from the acceleration of the project which was finished two years ahead of schedule. A large portion of this amount was spent on finishing the genomic draft obtained in 2000. The sequencing of chromosome 14 cost about 10 million euros, to which several million euros for analysis and annotation must be added.

Without a doubt, the expected benefits for society as a whole greatly exceed the expenditure for this investment; research based on the genome should lead to a great expansion of the biotechnology industry, new treatments and drugs, and huge progress for human health, for example in the domain of diagnosis.