The human genome project (HGP) is the international project to sequence the DNA of the human genome. The sequencing work is conducted in many laboratories around the world, but the majority of the work is being done by five institutions: the Whitehead Institute for Medical Research in Massachusetts (WIMR), the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, the University of Washington, the Joint Genome Institute in California and The Sanger Centre near Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Most of the Funding for these centers is provided by the United States National Institute of Health and Department of Energy, and the Wellcome Trust, a charitable foundation in the UK.

Completely sequencing the human genome was first suggested at a conference in Alta, Utah in 1984. The conference was convened by the US Department of Energy, which was concerned with measuring the mutation rate of human DNA when...