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It has already added an additional 123, Paten says, and it hopes to reach the goal of 350 by next year.

Paten said the new reference should help scientists understand more about what’s normal and what’s not.

Although any two people’s genomes are more than 99% identical, Paten said “it’s those differences that are the things that genetics and genomics is concerned with studying and understanding.”

Paten, a pangenome study author and project leader, said 70% of that first reference genome came from an African American man with mixed African and European ancestry who answered an ad for volunteers in a Buffalo newspaper in 1997.

“We need a really good understanding of the variations, the differences between human beings,” said genomics expert Benedict Paten of the University of California, Santa Cruz.