The Human Genome Project (HGP) is an international scientific research project. Its primary goals were to determine the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA and to identify the approximately 25,000 genes of the human genome. They also want to understand it and complete a map of all their findings.
The project began in 1990 initially headed by James D. Watson. A working draft of the genome was released in 2000 and a complete one in 2003, with further analysis still being published. A parallel project was conducted by the private company Celera Genomics. Most of the sequencing was performed in universities and research centers from the United States, Canada and Great Britain. The mapping of human genes is an important step in the development of medicines and other aspects of health care.
The project's roots grew from early work on the inheritance of traits, such as those in plants. For example, one famous geneticist, Gregor Mendel, studied how the color of a given flower (a trait) would be passed down to the next generation of flowers. In 1953, researchers Watson and Crick discovered the molecular structure of DNA.