GENCODE is a scientific project in genome research and part of the ENCODE (ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements) scale-up project. The GENCODE consortium was initially formed as part of the pilot phase of the ENCODE project to identify and map all protein-coding genes within the ENCODE regions (approx. 1% of Human genome). Given the initial success of the project, GENCODE now aims to build an “Encyclopedia of genes and genes variants”.