The Human Genome Project: Lessons from Large-Scale Biology

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 300; no. 5617; pp. 286 - 290
• Main Authors: Collins, Francis S., Morgan, Michael, Patrinos, Aristides
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Association for the Advancement of Science 11-04-2003; The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Access to Information; Analysis; Automation; Biology; Computational Biology; Databases, Nucleic Acid; DNA; Funding; Genetic research; Genome, Human; Genomes; Genomics; Government Agencies; History; History, 20th Century; Human genetics; Human genome; Human genome project; Human Genome Project - ethics; Human Genome Project - history; Human Genome Project - organization & administration; Humans; International Cooperation; Management Systems; Medical research; Methods; Molecular biology; National Institutes of Health (U.S.); Planning; Private Sector - organization & administration; Public Policy; Public Sector - organization & administration; Publishing; Quality Control; Research Projects; Science Activities; Science Projects; Scientific Research; Scientists; Sequence Analysis, DNA - instrumentation; Sequence Analysis, DNA - methods; Sequencing; United States; Viewpoints; Vision; United States
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.1084564

The Human Genome Project has been the first major foray of the biological and medical research communities into "big science." In this Viewpoint, we present some of our experiences in organizing and managing such a complicated, publicly funded, international effort. We believe that many of the lessons we learned will be applicable to future large-scale projects in biology.