Word: venter
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Venter admits that whole-genome shotgunning will leave gaps in the sequence where segments can't be fitted perfectly. But as he points out, traditional sequencing leaves holes as well. Like the government's gaps, his can be filled in later--and fast. "Let's say there are 50,000 holes averaging 83 letters each," he says. "At the rate we plan to clone and sequence DNA, we could close those...
...many scientists believe that Venter won't be able to complete the genome-reassembly process. They liken the job to taking a year's worth of issues of a magazine like this one, chopping the pages into one-line fragments, then trying to put the fragments back together without a single typo. As daunting as that seems, imagine that up to 30% of the text consists of nearly identical strings of words up to 7,000 letters long. Assembling these "repeat sequences," says the genome project's Francis Collins, is "a challenge to anyone who doesn't break it down...
Whether or not Venter succeeds in putting his Humpty Dumpty genome back together again, his basic premise, shared by the competition at Genset and Incyte, remains compelling: you don't need the entire genome mapped to high precision to make big advances. Cohen's discoveries of prostate-cancer genes are one example. Similarly, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, part of NIH's National Library of Medicine, is using databases of partial gene sequences to zero in on genes that make aberrant proteins in ailments like Parkinson's disease...
Meanwhile, the threat of being upstaged by Venter has put enormous pressure on the Human Genome Project. During a previously scheduled project review last summer, the directors did a thorough re-evaluation of their procedures, soliciting advice from the scientists doing the actual mapping. In the end, the message was clear. Says Collins: "We heard from the users that our current degree of accuracy wasn't needed for many of their strategies...
...Venter wasn't finished, though. Last month it was revealed that the U.S. Department of Energy, whose labs are part of the federal project, was negotiating with Venter to let him do part of the job for it. The cost to the government: zero. That proposal was put on ice by project leaders, supposedly because the DOE had contracted with Venter without checking with other project members, and also out of fear that the release of information to the public might be delayed. Unofficially, it's clear that sour grapes over Venter's latest triumph played a role in their...