The Genographic Project will provide new knowledge about the history of human migration and will answer eternal questions of the genetic diversity of humankind. This research, which is being conducted the world over, is directed by the geneticist Spencer Wells along with individuals from 11 first-rate institutions including Jaume Bertranpetit and David Comas, geneticists from the Evolutionary Biology Unit at the UPF Department of Health and Experimental Sciences ( CEXS) who are taking part as the project coordinators throughout Europe. The initiative stems from a cooperation agreement made by National Geographic, IBM, the Watts Family Foundation, Spencer Wells and a group of researchers chosen from those people from around the world with the greatest level of expertise on the topic.

The goal of The Genographic Project is to help people to understand their history, thereby enabling them to become familiar with the migratory patterns of our forefathers from time immemorial and to discover how it is that, despite such a disparity in appearances, humankind as a whole belongs to the same family tree and possesses the same origins. The scientific community contributing to the project are working to gather together and analyse in excess of 100,000 DNA samples from people all over the globe.

The project was presented to the Spanish media on 26 June at UPF's Ciutadella Campus. The project directors in Europe Jaume Bertranpetit and David Comas took part in the press conference. During the event, the press were informed as to the current state of play of the project which got underway in 2005 and is expected to be complete in 2010. The study is divided into two clearly distinguished sections with specific goals and methodologies.

Both parts supplement one another and deal with the project in scientific and public terms. As far as the scientific aspect of the project is concerned, Jaume Bertranpetit has pointed out that "based on the fact that the origins of mankind lie in Africa and that man dispersed across the entire inhabited world from this continent - and in Europe more than 40,000 years ago - the project seeks to trace the path humankind followed on a highly local basis, since it is this pathway that has given rise to the diversity we witness today; in other words, the project is about studying the lineage of man". In Europe the study is currently in the stage of gathering samples for genotyping.

As far as the public aspect of the project is concerned, 270,000 people from all over the globe have taken part thus far since 2005. However, the deadline is not yet upon us; accordingly, anyone who is interested in finding outabout their individual lineage can submit their own DNA for analysis. This process will be voluntary and anonymous owing to a system of codes that identify each sample. According to David Comas, "the public aspect of The Genographic Project enables people to discover their own origins on an individual basis and find out where they lie on the current global map of genetic diversity". This data forms part of a database that is prepared in parallel to the project. It will provide supplementary genetic information on the people taking part, independently from the data obtained through sampling during the scientific stage.

Some early results point to the fact that in genetic terms, Europe is highly homogenous, a fact which stands in stark contrast to an African continent that is highly diverse due primarily to migration of man over the course of history. Specifically, as far as Spain is concerned, during his presentation David Comas remarked on the fact that "our genes carry the reticent print left as a result of North African migration to the Iberian Peninsula."