ENCODE Overview

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) launched a public research consortium named ENCODE, the Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements, in September 2003, to carry out a project to identify all functional elements in the human genome sequence. The project started with two components – a pilot phase and a technology development phase.

The pilot phase tested and compared existing methods to rigorously analyze a defined portion of the human genome sequence (See: ENCODE Pilot Project). The conclusions from this pilot project were published in June 2007 in Nature and Genome Research [genome.org]. The findings highlighted the success of the project to identify and characterize functional elements in the human genome. The technology development phase also has been a success with the promotion of several new technologies to generate high throughput data on functional elements.

With the success of the initial phases of the ENCODE Project, NHGRI funded new awards in September 2007 to scale the ENCODE Project to a production phase on the entire genome along with additional pilot-scale studies. Like the pilot project, the ENCODE production effort is organized as an open consortium and includes investigators with diverse backgrounds and expertise in the production and analysis of data (See: ENCODE Participants and Projects). This production phase also includes a Data Coordination Center [genome.ucsc.edu] to track, store and display ENCODE data along with a Data Analysis Center to assist in integrated analyses of the data. All data generated by ENCODE participants will be rapidly released into public databases (See: Accessing ENCODE Data) and available through the project’s Data Coordination Center.

Source: genome.gov