HapMap Consortium expands mapping effort 7/2/05. By the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute Developing a more powerful map of human genetic variation.

The International HapMap Consortium, boosted by an additional $3.3 million in public-private support, has announced plans to create an even more powerful map of human genetic variation than originally envisioned. The map will accelerate the discovery of genes related to common diseases, such as asthma, cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

When the project was launched in October 2002, the Consortium set September 2005 as the target for completing its map of common patterns of human genetic variation, also known as haplotypes. By the end of February 2005, however, the group already will have reached completion of its first draft of the human haplotype map, or HapMap, which will consist of 1 million markers of genetic variation, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).

The Consortium's new goal is to build an improved version of the HapMap that is about five times denser than the original plan. By testing another 4.6 million SNPs from publicly available databases, the density of SNP 'signposts' across the genome will be increased from about one every 3,000 bases to about one every 600.

Feature: The International HapMap Project

Background: Haplotype mapping

The Wellcome Trust is funding the genotyping work at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute - approximately one-quarter of the Project - as well as supporting Professor Lon Cardon at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford who is involved in the analysis.

Image credit: Neil Leslie