 A decade after Sanger and Maxam and Gilbert published their DNA sequencing methods in 1975 the first concrete talk of a human genome project started to appear in writing (Dulbecco 1986) and at different workshops (Sinsheimer 1989; Palca 1986). The Human Genome Project (HGP) itself became a reality in 1990 when it was officially launched as a US federal program (see 1990 in a brief history and timeline [NHGRI] in the   Other Internet Resources section  below).