"We are excited that the HapMap data will be even more easily available for researchers to use in their efforts to find genes that influence many common diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension and arthritis. Gene mappers have been using the HapMap data almost as rapidly as we have been able to generate them," said Yusuke Nakamura, M.D., Ph.D., director of the University of Tokyo's Human Genome Center, as well as leader of the RIKEN SNP Research Center and the Japanese group working on the International HapMap Project.
Researchers are already using the HapMap data to study conditions such as type 2 diabetes, asthma and dyslexia, as well as genes related to differences in how individuals metabolize and react to certain medications. When the HapMap is completed next year, those studies will be able to be carried out even more efficiently.
"We are delighted that our public databases will now be able to integrate the HapMap data with other genomic data," said Ewan Birney, Ph.D., who heads Ensembl, one of the public databases that had been unable, until today, to incorporate the HapMap data, and which is a joint genome browser project between the European Bioinformatics Institute and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England. "Now, researchers will be able to study how this new information about human genetic variation relates to genes and their function. Such studies are essential to effor
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Contact: Geoff Spencer
spencerg@mail.nih.gov
301-402-0911
NIH/National Human Genome Research Institute
10-Dec-2004