A little less than a decade ago, the Human Genome Project (HGP) was launched to map out all human genes, which determine nearly all the physical characteristics in the human body.

The international scientific community compared this project with the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bomb, and the Apollo Project, which sent a human being to the moon.

This bold project, funded by the US Government and several non-profit international foundations, originally set the deadline as 2005 and promised to draw up what was called the second anatomic map of human beings.

The project's deadline has been upped more than once in order to face the challenge of a handful of privately-run gene-hunting companies, such as the US-based Celera Genomics established by geneticist Craig Venter.

Last March, the HGP announced the successful completion of its pilot phase of sequencing the human genome and declared it would complete the first draft of the human DNA sequence next spring, well ahead of Venter.

In 1994, the National Natural Sciences Foundation launched China's own HGP, known as CHGP.

The Ministry of Science and Technology established two research centres, known as the northern and southern centres, in Beijing and Shanghai to conduct the gene work.

Meanwhile, the prestigious Fudan University and a Shanghai-based consortium founded a commercially run genome-hunting company.