Global project to map DNA of 1,000 people

Any two people may be roughly 99% identical at the genetic level. But the small differences are what tantalize scientists, and now they plan to map the DNA of 1,000 people worldwide to examine human genetic variation.

The goal: To create a catalog of these differences, the most detailed yet, that scientists would mine for variations that help explain why some people get certain illnesses and others don't.
MAPPING HUMAN TRAITS: Details about the 1000 Genomes project

The international project was announced Tuesday. It will be a collaboration of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Britain, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and China's Beijing Genomics Institute Shenzhen.

The Human Genome Project offered the first map of the approximately 25,000 human genes in 2003. It was based on a mix of DNA from different people. Only a handful of individual people's DNA has been mapped since.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-01-22-genomes_N.htm?csp=34