Word: venter
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Somewhat unconvincingly, Venter now denies he was ever racing the HGP. "To me it's really a race to impact people's lives," he says. Collins, who has been pooh-poohing the idea of a race, insists in an almost perfectly crafted sound bite that "the only race involved here is the human race...
...question is whether, with the publicly funded project's data online, there will be a market for Celera's products. Venter says yes. He'll be offering sophisticated, contamination-free, gilt-edged data, he explains, that include the comparative genomes of other species and the genetics of specific diseases, plus special proprietary software to analyze this genetic mother lode...
Having signed up five major pharmaceutical houses as well as Vanderbilt University, Venter says Celera has jumped ahead of all its rivals, with revenue doubling every year. Celera's stock has gyrated wildly from $15 a share to more than $320 and down to $50 in the space of a year, so Wall Street obviously can't make up its mind about the company. But, says Venter, "our business model is working terrifically." He expects profitability in another couple of years...
What's next? To get a fuller racial and gender mix, Venter will go through at least six more human genomes, probably including his own ("Why not, if that's the business I'm in?" he asks, admitting nothing). After the mouse, he'll probably go on to the chimp, among our closest primate kin, and explore plant genes, including rice and corn. He is also taking Celera into the emerging field of proteomics--understanding how genes make and manage proteins, the actual building blocks of life...
Given the dramatic differences in their personalities, Venter and Collins will never be close collaborators. The agreement that led up to this week's announcement has more the character of a statesmanlike cease-fire than of a scientific merger. The two teams will try to publish their work simultaneously--but not jointly--in an upcoming issue of a major journal, probably Science. They have agreed that patents are appropriate only at the point where a gene's function is understood...