As part of our activities, we worked on early approaches to use recombinant DNA technology to study and utilize genetic variation to understand human disease. As such, we were highly involved in the early phases of the Human Genome Project and in applying the rudimentary map to map and clone disease genes, notably genes associated with neurofibromatosis, haemochromatosis, breast cancer, bowel cancer and melanoma. The initial success with finding NF1 (the neurofibromatosis gene) and understanding the association between haemochromatosis and HLA showed the potential for the technology.