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Celera HGP
Celera Genomics HGP
In 1998, an identical, privately funded quest was launched by the American
researcher Craig Venter and his firm Celera Genomics. The $300 million Celera
effort was intended to proceed at a faster pace and at a fraction of the cost of
the roughly $3 billion publicly funded project.
Celera used a newer, riskier technique called whole genome shotgun sequencing,
which had been used to sequence bacterial genomes of up to 6 million base pairs
in length, but not for anything nearly as large as the 3 billion base pair human
genome.
Celera initially announced that it would seek patent protection on "only
200-300" genes, but later amended this to seeking "intellectual property
protection" on "fully-characterized important structures" amounting to 100-300
targets. The firm eventually filed preliminary ("place-holder") patent
applications on 6,500 whole or partial genes. Celera also promised to publish
their findings in accordance with the terms of the 1996 "Bermuda Statement," by
releasing new data quarterly (the HGP released its new data daily), although,
unlike the publicly funded project, they would not permit free redistribution or
commercial use of the data.
In March 2000, President Clinton announced that the genome sequence could not be
patented, and should be made freely available to all researchers. The statement
sent Celera's stock plummeting and dragged down the biotechnology-heavy Nasdaq.
The biotech sector lost about $50 billion in market capitalization in two days.
Although the working draft was announced in June 2000, it was not until February
2001 that Celera and the HGP scientists published details of their drafts.
Special issues of Nature (which published the publicly funded project's
scientific paper) and Science (which published Celera's paper) described the
methods used to produce the draft sequence and offered analysis of the sequence.
These drafts covered about 90% of the genome, with much of the remaining 10%
filled in later. In February 2001, at the time of the joint publications, press
releases announced that the project had been completed by both groups. Improved
drafts were announced in 2003 and again in 2005, filling in roughly 8% of the
remaining sequence.
The competition proved to be very good for the project, spurring the public
groups to modify their strategy in order to accelerate progress. The rivals
initially agreed to pool their data, but the agreement fell apart when Celera
refused to deposit its data in the unrestricted public database GenBank. Celera
had incorporated the public data into their genome, but forbade the public
effort to use Celera data.
HGP is the most well known of many international genome projects aimed at
sequencing the DNA of a specific organism. While the human DNA sequence offers
the most tangible benefits, important developments in biology and medicine are
predicted as a result of the sequencing of model organisms, including mice,
fruit flies, zebrafish, yeast, nematodes, plants, and many microbial organisms
and parasites.
In 2005, researchers from the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (IHGSC)
of the HGP announced a new estimate of 20,000 to 25,000 genes in the human
genome[6]. Previously 30,000 to 40,000 had been predicted, while estimates at
the start of the project reached up to as high as 2,000,000. The number
continues to fluctuate and it is now expected that it will take many years to
agree on a precise value for the number of genes in the human genome.
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