The Netherlands Genome Project

Professor Cisca Wijmenga: ‘Our trio design will help us to determine how a certain variant fits within the paternal and maternal patterns.’

The Netherlands Genome Project (‘het Genoom van Nederland’) is truly unique. Never before have so many genomes from one country been sequenced using such a ‘trio’ design. By sequencing the genomes of 250 couples and their offspring (the trio’s), this project will map genetic variation in the Netherlands. It will provide a solid foundation for ‘imputing’ rare variants (i.e. deriving them by computation) in the more than 100,000 samples already stored in Dutch biobanks and resulting from conventional genomewide association (GWA) studies.

Project leader Prof. Cisca Wijmenga: ‘In the next ten years, whole genome sequencing will become a standard tool in research and molecular diagnostics. We hope to kick start the nationwide implementation of such tools with this project and build up the expertise needed to enable our scientists and the public to benefit from these future developments’.

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See also: BBMRI-NL website, first official newsletter