Genome Reference Consortium

At the time the human reference was initially described, it was clear that some regions were recalcitrant to analysis with existing technology, leaving gaps in the known sequence.

The GRC is a collaborative effort which interacts with various groups in the scientific community.

[1] The primary member institutes are: The goal of the Consortium is to correct the small number of regions in the reference that are currently misrepresented, to close as many remaining gaps as possible and to produce alternative assemblies of structurally variant loci when necessary.

Initially the focus was on the human and mouse reference genomes, but in expansions new organisms were added to the consortium.

[4] As of September 2019, the major assembly releases for human, mouse, zebrafish, and chicken are GRCh38, GRCm38, GRCz11, and GRCg6a, respectively.