List of Events in NHGRI History - 1998

1998

• March 1998 – Vice President Al Gore announces that the Clinton administration is calling for legislation to bar employers from discriminating against workers in hiring or promotion because of their genetic makeup.
• September 1998 – At a meeting of the main advisory body for the Human Genome Project (HGP), project planners present a new plan to produce a "finished" version of the DNA sequence of the human genome by the end of 2003, two years ahead of its original schedule. The HGP plans to generate a "working draft" in 2001 that, together with the finished sequence, will cover at least 90 percent of the genome. The working draft will be immediately valuable to researchers and will form the basis for a high-quality, finished genome sequence.
• September 1998 – A major international collaborative research study finds the site of a gene for susceptibility to prostate cancer on the X chromosome. This is the first time a gene for a common type of cancer is mapped to the X chromosome.
• September 1998 – NHGRI Office of Science Education releases first online version of "Talking Glossary of Genetics" in English. Spanish language version follow in 18 months.
• October 1998 – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Energy (DOE) develop a new five-year plan for the Human Genome Project (HGP). This plan, published in the October 23 issue of the journal Science, is designed to carry the project forward for the next five years, fiscal years 1999 through 2003.
• December 1998 – The genome of the tiny roundworm (Caenorhabditis elegans) is sequenced by researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and other Human Genome Project (HGP)-funded scientists.