These same technical advances are enabling the application of whole genome sequencing to a variety of medically important samples. Some of these studies already exceed the 1000 Genomes Project in size34,35,36, but the results described here remain a prime resource for studies of genetic variation for several reasons. First, the 1000 Genomes Project samples provide a broad representation of human genetic variation—in contrast to the bulk of complex disease studies in humans, which primarily study European ancestry samples and which, as we show, fail to capture functionally important variation in other populations. Second, the project analyses incorporate multiple analysis strategies, callsets and variant types. Although such ensemble analyses are cumbersome, they provide a benchmark for what can be achieved and a yardstick against which more practical analysis strategies can be evaluated. Third, project samples and data resulting from them can be shared broadly, enabling sequencing strategies and analysis methods to be compared easily on a benchmark set of samples. Because of the wide availability of the data and samples, these samples have been and will continue to be used for
