Personal Genome Project

The Personal Genome Project (PGP) is a long term, large cohort study which aims to sequence and publicize the complete genomes and medical records of 100,000 volunteers, in order to enable research into personal genomics and personalized medicine. It was initiated by Harvard University's George M. Church in 2005. As of November 2017, more than 10,000 volunteers had joined the project. Volunteers were accepted initially if they were permanent residents of the US and were able to submit tissue and/or genetic samples. Later the project was expanded to other countries. The Personal Genome Project (PGP) is a long term, large cohort study which aims to sequence and publicize the complete genomes and medical records of 100,000 volunteers, in order to enable research into personal genomics and personalized medicine. It was initiated by Harvard University's George M. Church in 2005. As of November 2017, more than 10,000 volunteers had joined the project. Volunteers were accepted initially if they were permanent residents of the US and were able to submit tissue and/or genetic samples. Later the project was expanded to other countries. The Project was initially launched in the US in 2005 and later extended to Canada (2012), United Kingdom (2013), Austria (2014), Korea (2015) and China (2017). The project allowed participants to publish the genotype (the full DNA sequence of all 46 chromosomes) of the volunteers, along with extensive information about their phenotype: medical records, various measurements, MRI images, etc. All data were placed within the public domain and made available over the Internet so that researchers could test various hypotheses about the relationships among genotype, environment and phenotype. Participants could decide what data they are comfortable to publish publicly and could choose to upload additional data or remove existing data at their own convenience.