Word: projects
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Nobel laureate David Baltimore, director of M.I.T.'s Whitehead Institute, was one of the many who feared that such a megaproject would have much the same impact on biology that the shuttle had on the U.S. space program: soaking up so much money and talent that smaller but vital projects would dry up. Others stressed that the technology to do the job in a reasonable time was not available. But by 1986 some opponents realized they were fighting a losing battle. "The idea is gaining momentum. I shiver at the thought," said Baltimore then. Now, however, he approves...
What really turned the tide was a February 1988 report by the prestigious ; National Research Council enthusiastically endorsing a project that would first map and interpret important regions of the genome, then -- as better technology became available -- proceed to reading the entire genetic message. Most of the remaining critics were silenced last fall when the NIH chose the respected Watson as project director. Still, some scientists remain wary of the project. Says David Botstein, a vice president at Genentech and a member of the Human Genome Advisory Committee: "We need to test its progress, regulate its growth and slap...
...most formidable tasks faced by geneticists is to learn the nature of that machinery and other genetic instructions buried in the lengthy, still undeciphered base sequences. To do so fully requires achievement of the project's most challenging goal: the "sequencing" of the entire human genome. In other words, the identification and listing in order of all the genome's 3 billion base pairs...
That effort, says Caltech research fellow Richard Wilson, "is analogous to going around and shaking hands with everyone on earth." The resulting string of code letters, according to the 1988 National Research Council report urging adoption of the genome project, would fill a million-page book. Even then, much of the message would be obscure. To decipher it, researchers would need more powerful computer systems to roam the length of the genome, seeking out meaningful patterns and relationships...
Hood is not alone in his quest for automation. That is also the goal of Columbia University biochemist Charles Cantor, recently appointed by the Energy Department to head one of its two genome centers. "It's largely an engineering project," Cantor explains, intended to produce tools for faster, less expensive sequencing and to develop data bases and computer programs to scan the data. Not to be outdone, Japan has set up a consortium of four high- tech companies to establish an automated assembly line, complete with robots, that researchers hope will be capable of sequencing 100,000 base pairs...