It involves eighteen countries, headed by the US, the UK, Japan, Germany, France and mainland China. The project was originally scheduled for completion in 2005, but intense competition from a privately owned gene-sequencing company, Celera Genomics, spurred the multinational team to bring forward its timetable, and a full, precise map of the human genome is now expected before 2003.
此一由美、英、日、德、法、中（大陸）為首，十八個國家共同合作的計畫，原訂在二○○五年完成，由於來自私人賽雷拉基因公司的激烈競爭，使得跨國家團隊全力以赴，速度加快，可望提前在二○○三年前完成精確圖譜。