Currently, all over the world large-scale projects aiming at sequencing thousands of probands get kicked-off, like the „precision medicine initiative“ in the US, the 100,000 Genomes initiative in UK, or the 50,000 Genome sequencing project in Saudi-Arabia, just to name a few.
The potential of large-scale genome sequencing project is very well justified in a speech held by President Barack Obama at the White House earlier this year to kick-off the „precision medicine initiative“.
Unfortunately, in Germany no large-scale genome sequencing project is on the horizon and it seems like German genome researchers might loose their leading role in the field.
An essay (in German) asking about the future role of German researchers in the field of Genomics has been published in the Laborjournal by Heribert Schunkert and Jeanette Erdmann.