Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Monday, October 20, 2008

More on the Personal Genome Project

Ellen Nakashima, Genome Database Will Link Genes, Traits in Public View, The Washington Post, October 18, 2008. (Thanks to Garrett Eastman.)
George Church wants to put his personal genetic blueprint online for all to see ...

And he wants 99,999 other people to follow suit.

The Harvard genetics professor's Personal Genome Project is an attempt to build the only public genomic database that connects genes with diseases. With it, he believes, scientists could correlate more easily many millions of genetic variants with medical and other traits ...

The database, a nonprofit venture, is scheduled to go online Monday, when Church and up to nine other volunteers -- the "PGP 10" -- will release their genomic data and traits profiles to the public. Then anyone, from a university researcher to a kid working in a basement lab, will be able to tap into the data and create research applications much the way that Facebook allows vendors to create game applications. ...

See also our past post on the Personal Genome Project.