The Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is widely regarded as the leading academic genome center in the United States.

Washington University generated the first complete animal genome, the nematode C. elegans, with collaborators at the Sanger Centre near Cambridge, England.

Washington University has generated one quarter of the DNA code of the human genome and has been called the “spearhead of the attack” on the genome. The human genome physical map and much of the bioinformatics software for assembling the genome also originated at the University.

Washington University is the leading center for the creation of sequences from gene transcripts, called Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs). ESTs define the actual genes buried in the genome. The University has generated over half of all publicly available ESTs.