RESUMEN
The Welfare Genome Project (WGP) provided 1,000 healthy Korean volunteers with detailed genetic and health reports to test the social perception of integrating personal genetic and healthcare data at a large-scale. WGP was launched in 2016 in the Ulsan Metropolitan City as the first large-scale genome project with public participation in Korea. The project produced a set of genetic materials, genotype information, clinical data, and lifestyle survey answers from participants aged 20-96. As compensation, the participants received a free general health check-up on 110 clinical traits, accompanied by a genetic report of their genotypes followed by genetic counseling. In a follow-up survey, 91.0% of the participants indicated that their genetic reports motivated them to improve their health. Overall, WGP expanded not only the general awareness of genomics, DNA sequencing technologies, bioinformatics, and bioethics regulations among all the parties involved, but also the general public's understanding of how genome projects can indirectly benefit their health and lifestyle management. WGP established a data construction framework for not only scientific research but also the welfare of participants. In the future, the WGP framework can help lay the groundwork for a new personalized healthcare system that is seamlessly integrated with existing public medical infrastructure.
RESUMEN
We present the initial phase of the Korean Genome Project (Korea1K), including 1094 whole genomes (sequenced at an average depth of 31×), along with data of 79 quantitative clinical traits. We identified 39 million single-nucleotide variants and indels of which half were singleton or doubleton and detected Korean-specific patterns based on several types of genomic variations. A genome-wide association study illustrated the power of whole-genome sequences for analyzing clinical traits, identifying nine more significant candidate alleles than previously reported from the same linkage disequilibrium blocks. Also, Korea1K, as a reference, showed better imputation accuracy for Koreans than the 1KGP panel. As proof of utility, germline variants in cancer samples could be filtered out more effectively when the Korea1K variome was used as a panel of normals compared to non-Korean variome sets. Overall, this study shows that Korea1K can be a useful genotypic and phenotypic resource for clinical and ethnogenetic studies.