An international project to map common patterns of genetic variation in humans has been launched, and the University of Oxford is the only UK university chosen to be involved. The HapMap project is an international collaboration which will study patterns of genetic variation in populations in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America.'The HapMap project is the successor to the human genome project,’ said Peter Donnelly in the Department of Statistics at Oxford. ‘The human genome project mapped one copy of the human genome. At 99.9% of places on the genome we all share the same DNA. The next stage is to understand the other bits – the differences between individuals. That’s what HapMap is doing.'An international competition was held to fund analysis groups in the HapMap project, and three grants were awarded worldwide. Two of these were awarded to researchers at the University of Oxford: Professor Lon Cardon at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, and Professor Donnelly and colleagues in the Department of Statistics.
