The other eight backers are retired professor Tricia David, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sir JohnSulston, journalist Philip Knightley, Lady Caroline Evans, friend Sarah Saunders, Joseph Farrell, Sarah Harrison and Tracy Worcester.
But few works, since Francis Picabia's depiction of Marie Laurencin as an imaginary machine, challenge convention as much as the portrait of Sir JohnSulston by Marc Quinn, recently unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery.
The HGP published its draft reading of all the bases and locations of about 30, 000 genes early in 2001, shortly after one of the leading UK scientists on the project, Dr JohnSulston, was told he too would receive a knighthood.