The human genome project (HGP), declared
completed in April 2003, but a working draft also
available and published in February 2001, was undertaken
with the aim of sequencing the 3 billion
nucleotides of human DNA and identifying all the
genes; the functional elements of DNA. Moreover,
it was expected that the knowledge gleaned from
the genome would result in the development of
novel diagnostic assays, targeted therapies and improved
ability to predict the onset, severity as well
as progression of diseases and thus will have a major
impact on medical practice. Currently, genetic
information is being used to identify mutations in
rare as well as undiagnosed genetic disorders and
select the therapy best suited for a genotype. This
has been made possible by post HGP development
of many parallelized high throughput technologies
such as .