The consortium plans to study 11,000 samples to find genes associated with coronary heart disease, hypertension, types 1 and 2 diabetes, bipolar disorder, Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and tuberculosis. The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute will analyze an additional 4,000 samples to find the genetic origins of diseases such as types 1 and 2 diabetes, obesity, and malaria.
Perlegen will genotype the 15,000 individuals, producing more than 10 billion genotypes, using Affymetrix's microarray technology, including the Human Mapping 500K array set.
The WTCCC is a team of 24 human geneticists at a number of