The human genome project was launched by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and international partners in 1990 and reached its first major landmark with the publication of a first working draft of the human genome in 2001 (1). The simultaneous publication of a genome draft from a parallel genome project outside the public sector (2) highlighted the tremendous technological advances that made possible ahead of schedule what originally seemed to many an overambitious undertaking. The availability of the human and other genomes subsequently led to renewed interest and further advances in the field of population genetics and provided new tools and information for the study of polymorphism, recombination, linkage disequilibrium and genetic association leading to knowledge that has been instrumental for the study of complex disorders.
