reference population A population made of individuals from whom samples were collected as part of a project such as the 1000 Genomes Project or the Human Genome Diversity Project (HDGP) in order to establish a comprehensive overview of human genetic diversity. Sample sizes for these reference populations vary from 1-3 to 100s of individuals but all individuals in a population will have been sampled in the same location. Each population is allocated to a continental or sub-continental superpopulation such as European or African. Subsets of samples from a reference population may have been used in multiple different analyses. population population