In the news

The International HapMap Consortium, a public-private partnership of scientists and funding agencies from Canada, China, Japan, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States, has announced plans to use additional funding of $3.3 million to create an improved version of the map of human genetic variation. The first draft of the human haplotype map, comprising 1 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) as markers of genetic variation, is due to be completed by the end of this month. The improved ‘Phase II’ HapMap will be much more information-rich than the first version, incorporating many more SNPs and increasing the density of SNP markers from the present average of one for every 3,000 bases in the human genome to around one for every 600 bases. The second phase of the HapMap project will enable researchers to refine gene discovery to specific regions of the genome in the search for genes related to common diseases such as asthma, cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

NHGRI Director Francis Collins commented: "This will help us create a far more powerful HapMap than we ever imagined. We sincerely thank all those who are giving their time, technology and money to help turn this dream into reality. The payoff will be a better understanding of the genetic risk factors underlying a wide range of diseases and conditions". The additional HapMap funding came from the National Human Genome Research Institute, the Wellcome Trust, Genome Canada/Genome Quebec, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer. Perlegen Sciences is making its rapid, high-throughput genotyping capacity available for the genotyping of additional SNPs from publicly available databases to add to the HapMap.