The Human Genome Project is the collaborative research program whose goal was the understanding and mapping of the collection of all genes in a human body, also known as a genome. It all started in 1911 when Alfred Sturtevant realized that in order to organize his data on fruit fly's mutations, he had to be able to map the locations of its genes. Researchers soon realized they could create the same sort of map for human genes. The first draft of the human genome was published in 2001 by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium. The ultimate product of the project has been a resource of detailed information about the structure, organization, and function of the complete set of human genes.
Discoveries made by the Human Genome Project have only created more efforts to characterize entire genomes of other organisms often used in biological research, such as mice, fruit flies, and flatworms. These efforts are highly supported because of the similarities between these organisms genes and those of humans. The identification of the sequence or function of a gene in one of these organisms has the potential to explain the homologous gene in a human being, or another organism. If completed correctly, Francis Collins, the director of NHGRI says about a genome, "It's a history book - a narrative of the journey of our species through time. It's a shop manual, with an incredibly detailed blueprint for building every human cell. And it's a transformative textbook of medicine, with insights that will give health care providers immense new powers to treat, prevent and cure disease."
https://www.genome.gov/12011238/an-overview-of-the-human-genome-project/
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