On Aug. 15, 1988, a program advisory committee on the human genome was established to advise the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on all aspects of research in the area of genomic analysis. The U.S. Human Genome Project, established in 1990, was completed in 2003 — a 13-year effort coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health.

The project was originally planned to last 15 years. In 2001, the Feb. 16 issue of Science and Feb. 15 issue of Nature contained the working draft of the human genome sequence.