http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/cancer/2008/10/23/lung-cancer-gene-discovery-a-sign-of-cancers-future.html

Scientific American is reporting that the Sanger Institute is starting a project to sequence a large portion (or all) DNA for 1000 individuals. The name 1000 Genomes Project is a bit of a misnomer because they are not getting the full genome sequence for all 1000. They are getting the full genome sequence of six people, detailed genome scans (whatever that means) for 180 people of various ethnicities, and less-detailed scans for the rest.

They are not collecting disease information about these people. So it sounds like they are just trying to make this a cross between the Human Genome Project and the HapMap project. These genomes will be a reference that researchers who are studying disease associations can use to compare with their samples.

These data alone will not be incredibly helpful for disease studies because by the time you stratify by ethnicity, the sample size you can compare with will be pretty small. If you combine that with the fact that you know nothing about their age or other demographics, the usefulness is questionable. However, I think this can be a good starting point and possibly a catalyst for future projects.

Regardless, it’s clear that genome sequence data is going to grow exponentially over the next few years until, before too long, it will be cheap and easy to do a full genome scan on thousands or millions of people.