What kind of blood cells supplied DNA for the public HGP donor libraries?

What kind of blood cells supplied DNA for the public HGP donor libraries? White blood cells supplied it.

Researchers collected blood samples from selected anonymous donors and used their white blood cells as a source of genomic DNA. The public-sector project created separate DNA libraries from samples taken from two male and two female donors.

White blood cells were useful because they contain nuclei, and nuclear DNA carries the chromosomes that researchers needed to copy, fragment, and sequence. Mature red blood cells, by contrast, lack nuclei, so they do not provide a comparable source of nuclear genomic DNA. Plasma is the liquid portion of blood, while platelets are cell fragments.

One library, known as RP11, contributed more than the others because its DNA had favorable quality characteristics. More than 70% of the public reference sequence ultimately came from that anonymous male donor’s library, but the finished reference was still assembled from multiple sources.