Map of human genome may need more time and resources

Compiling a detailed map of the human genome will take significantly more time and resources than previously thought, according to an article published in the June issue of Nature Genetics. Dr Leonid Kruglyak argues that the current gene-mapping efforts to identify 400,000 genetic markers to isolate genes for common diseases may be inadequate for the purposes of pharmaceutical research and development. The issue that still needs to settled is the required marker density for such maps, according to Dr Kruglyak, an associate member of the Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in the US. He predicts that researchers will need to locate at least half a million 'mile markers' along the 'DNA highway'. The publication of Kruglyak's article comes in the wake of the establishment of the SNP Consortium, an unprecedented, non profit-making collaboration between industry and academia to draw up a detailed map of the genome.