SANTA CRUZ, CA – February 8, 2021
The Genomics Institute at UC Santa Cruz takes great pride in being at the forefront of data sharing, which is fundamental to advancing scientific discovery. It is this spirit that compelled us to become the first to publish the human genome to the internet, keeping our data free, forever, for all of humanity.
That moment 20 years ago was the culmination of heroic efforts by thousands of scientists around the globe. Still, we knew at the time that the human genome we had shared needed more: The data uploaded on July 7, 2000 belonged to a single individual and therefore was not representative of all humans. It contained only the level of information that 2000-era technology was able to detect. Now, using technologies developed here at UC Santa Cruz, scientists are on the cusp of creating a much more complete, high-resolution reference genome that also reflects the full spectrum of human diversity.
Hear from the UCSC researchers doing the challenging computational work that will finally create this diversified human reference genome. Watch our pangenome video.