Wellcome Sanger to host public talks to commemorate the Human Genome Project

This year marks the 20th anniversary of when the first draft of the human genome was publicly announced as part of a massive, global effort to sequence and map out the more than 3 billion base pairs of the human genome. To celebrate the occasion, the Wellcome Sanger Institute — one of the major institutions that led the effort — is hosting a series of free talks from many of the scientists who were part of the original Human Genome Project two decade ago as well as from those whose current work is a result of the project's completion. The first talk, which takes place today, features the director of Wellcome Sanger taking a historical look at how far genomic science has come in the past 20 years. The other talks, held monthly through November, will conclude with a discussion of how genomics is shaping our understanding of Covid-19.