Nature published the public consortium’s 2001 draft human-genome paper. The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium’s landmark article, “Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome,” appeared in the journal’s February 2001 issue.
The paper described a working draft produced by the publicly funded Human Genome Project and analyzed the genome’s organization, gene content, and evolutionary features. It was released alongside a separate paper in Science from Celera Genomics, the private company pursuing a competing sequencing effort. That parallel publication is the source of a common mix-up: both Nature and Science carried major 2001 human-genome papers, but the public consortium’s paper was in Nature.
The 2001 draft was not yet a flawless, end-to-end sequence. It covered most of the euchromatic genome while leaving gaps, especially in repetitive regions. Later improvements filled many of those gaps, and the public project’s formal sequencing phase was announced complete in 2003. The Nature paper nevertheless remains the defining publication of the public consortium’s draft.