A much-anticipated international project to sequence the entire genomes of 1,000 people was launched on Tuesday, but some question whether the three-year project is ambitious enough in its scope.

The '1,000 Genomes Project' will create a highly detailed reference map of human genetic variation and is the largest such project announced to date. "This is a historic turning point in genomics," says Yang Huanming, director of the Beijing Genomics Institute, whose Shenzen branch is one of the three institutes launching the project. The other two are the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK; and the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

"Projects such as this drive technology development."